Pope John Paul II's message to Indigenous Australians

If you stay closely united, you are like a tree standing in the middle of a bush-fire sweeping through the timber. The leaves are scorched and the tough bark is scarred and burned; but inside the tree the sap is still flowing, and under the ground the roots are still strong. Like that tree you have endured the flames, and you still have the power to be reborn.

From the earliest times men like Archbishop Polding of Sydney opposed the legal fiction adopted by European settlers that this land was terra nullius - nobody’s country. He strongly pleaded for the rights of the Aboriginal inhabitants to keep the traditional lands on which their whole society depended. The Church still supports you today.

Let it not be said that the fair and equitable recognition of Aboriginal rights to land is discrimination. To call for the acknowledgment of the land rights of people who have never surrendered those rights is not discrimination.

Christian people of good will are saddened to realise - many of them only recently - for how long a time Aboriginal people were transported from their homelands into small areas or reserves where families were broken up, tribes split apart, children orphaned and people forced to live like exiles in a foreign country.

The establishment of a new society for Aboriginal people cannot go forward without just and mutually recognised agreements with regard to these human problems, even though their causes lie in the past. The greatest value to be achieved by such agreements, which must be implemented without causing new injustices, is respect for the dignity and growth of the human person.

On your part, you must show that you too can walk tall and command the respect which every human being expects to receive from the rest of the human family.

Politicians and other people of influence, including some men of cloth, would do well to heed these visionary, considerate words of the Pope John Paul II.

John Howard, reported on News.com on April 3, 2005, said the Pope "… was one of those people that combined great strength with tremendous compassion". Australians were lucky to have had the Pope visit in 1986 and 1995, Mr Howard said. "Australian Catholics and Australians generally remember those visits with great affection."

It’s a pity the Prime Minister only recalls the Pope’s visit and not his caring speech made to his Indigenous supporters in the Red Centre in 1986. If he had he may not be as indifferent to our people as he has been during his political reign.

In light of the respect shown by our illustrious Prime Minister to the Pope I appeal to him to spell out, in a public address, his vision for Indigenous Affairs - preferably during Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC week in the coming months.

Maybe, just maybe, his speech might be recalled in the future, like the Pope’s speech or that famous Redfern Address made on December 10, 1992 by his adversary, Paul Keating.

And while my family waits with bated breath to see if such a speech transpires, we’ll ask our new Polish guardian above to give a small blessing on weekends for our gifted brothers - north and south of the border.