To you, Mr. Vice-President, for graciously coming here to say goodbye. To the Bishops of the Dioceses I have visited and the many people, who have worked so hard to make this visit a success. To the public authorities, to the police and security personnel, who have ensured efficiency, good order and safety. But democracy needs wisdom. Democracy needs virtue, if it is not to turn against everything that it is meant to defend and encourage.
Democracy stands or falls with the truths and values which it embodies and promotes.
Democracy serves what is true and right when it safeguards the dignity of every human person, when it respects inviolable and inalienable human rights, when it makes the common good the end and criterion regulating all public and social life. But these values themselves must have an objective content. Otherwise they correspond only to the power of the majority, or the wishes of the most vocal. The United States possesses a safeguard, a great bulwark, against this happening. At the center of the moral vision of your founding documents is the recognition of the rights of the human person, and especially respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life in all conditions and at all stages of development.