The Church has a right to proclaim its teaching and message publicly, Pope Benedict has said.

In an audience with the new Belgian ambassador to the Holy See, Benedict said that the Church finds it necessary “to stress that it has, as an institution, the right to express itself publicly.”

“It shares this right with all individuals and institutions, with the scope of speaking its mind on questions of common interest,” Benedict XVI said.

He added, “The Church respects the right of everyone to think differently from it; it would like that its right to expression also be respected.”

“The Church is a depository of a teaching, of a religious message that it received from Jesus Christ,” Benedict XVI stated, which “can be summarized with the following words from Sacred Scripture: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16).”

This teaching “throws its light upon the meaning of the personal, familial and social life of man,” he noted.

“The Church, having the common good as its objective, asks nothing other than the freedom to be able to propose this message, without imposing it on anyone, in respect for freedom of conscience,” the Pope stated.

Addressing the ambassador, he said that the Church in Belgium “has inscribed itself fully in the history and the social fabric of your nation,” he said, and “it desires to continue to be a factor in the harmonious coexistence among all.”

The Pope added that the Church was happy to “place itself at the service of all the components of Belgian society” through “its numerous educational institutions, its work of a social character and the voluntary efforts of so many faithful,” the Holy Father affirmed.