Pope calls for protection of life, greater investment in families

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI called for greater investment in families and protecting life.

As the Roman Catholic Church marked Day for Life Feb. 3, the pope used his Sunday Angelus address to echo the bishops' call "to invest in life and the family, also as an effective response" to the current economic crisis.

He greeted the Berlin-based Movement for Life and praised the European-wide initiative, "One of Us," "so that Europe may always be a place where every human being is protected in his dignity."

The "One of Us" movement is collecting signatures in EU countries to push the European Commission to propose legal protections of human life from conception to its natural end.

The pope also greeted the faculty of the University of Rome's college of medicine, encouraging them, especially professors of obstetrics and gynecology, "to educate health workers in the culture of life."

He said Jesus came to the world, not to build or achieve human consensus, but "to testify to the truth."

"The true prophet doesn't obey anyone else but God and puts himself at the service of truth, ready to pay personally," he said.

He said Jesus was a prophet of love and truth, which are "two names for the same thing, two names of God."