Pope John Paul II received Dr. Billington and the James Madison Council, the private sector advisory group to the Library, in a private audience on May 23.
Pope John Paul greets Dr. Billington at the Vatican. - L'osservatore Romano
The pope thanked the council "for its very successful sponsorship of 'Rome Reborn,' an unprecedented exhibition of Vatican treasures" on view at the Library in 1993. He also said that "the patrimony of human thought, cultural achievement and religious truth contained in the world's libraries is not only a monument to past human endeavor; it is the solid ground on which each new generation can strive to build a better future. To ignore this treasure would be for humanity to condemn itself to existing and working in a wasteland. Our own age particularly needs to recover the accumulated wisdom of the past."
Pope John Paul added: "You are particularly interested in ensuring that the uplifting and instructive record of human experience is made available in the new communications media. Herein lies an important dimension of your interest in the Vatican Apostolic Library, which has benefited in the past from the technical assistance of the Library of Congress," which, from 1927 to 1939, helped the Vatican Library catalog its collections.
The Librarian thanked the pope and reminded him of the long-standing ties between the Vatican and the Library of Congress. John Kluge, chairman of the Madison Council, presented Pope John Paul with a facsimile of a 19th century Polish atlas.
