Source: Zenit News Agency

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=46236

On December 15, 2003 Zenit News Agency reported, "John Paul II urged Sudan's bishops and Catholic faithful to make their contribution and respond to their country's urgent social needs. The Pope encouraged the Church's growth in the war-torn country when he received the Sudanese Catholic bishops in audience today, at the end of their five-yearly visit to Rome...'A tentative opening on the part of civil leadership can already be seen in the presence of Christians in the current government, and in the reactivation of the Commission for Interreligious Dialogue,' the Pope noted. 'You should do all that you can to encourage this, even as you insist that religious pluralism, as guaranteed by the Sudanese Constitution, should be respected,' John Paul II recommended."