1. Come, let us go up the mountain... (Is 2:3; cf. Mi 4:2). Let us listen today to this invitation of the prophet and reread it as an inner imperative: the imperative of the conscience and the imperative of the heart. The day 18 May morally obliges us to come to this mountain; to pause with prayer on our lips before the graves of the soldiers who fell here; to look at the walls of the monastery that then - thirty-five years ago - was reduced to rubble; to remember those events; to try, once again, to learn from them for the future.

We walk here in the footsteps of a great battle, one that gave the decisive blow to the last war in Europe, to the Second Great World War. This war, in the years 1939-1945, involved almost all the nations and states of our continent, it also involved non-European powers in its orbit, it manifested the heights of the heroism of the military, but it also revealed the dangerous face of human cruelty, it left behind the traces of the extermination camps, it took the lives of millions of human beings, it destroyed the fruits of the labour of many generations. It is difficult to enumerate all the calamities that befell mankind with it, showing him - at its end - even the possibility, through the means of the most modern weapons technology, of a possible future mass annihilation, before which the destruction of the past pales.

2. Who conducted this war? Who did the work of destruction? Men and nations. This was a war of European nations, albeit bound together by the traditions of a great culture: science and art deeply rooted in the past of Christian Europe. The men and the nations: this was their war; and, as victory and defeat was theirs, so also the effects of this conflict belong to them.

Why did they fight against each other, men and nations? Surely the truths of the Gospel and the traditions of great Christian culture did not drive them to this terrible fratricidal slaughter.

They were caught up in the war by the force of a system that, in antithesis to the Gospel and Christian traditions, had been imposed on some peoples with ruthless violence as an agenda, while forcing others to resist with arms in their hands. In gigantic struggles, that system suffered a definitive defeat. 18 May was one of the decisive stages in that defeat.

As we come to Montecassino on the XXXV anniversary of that day, we wish, through the eloquent evocation of that day, to understand before God, and before history, the meaning of the whole terrible experience of the Second World War. This is not easy; indeed, in a way, it becomes impossible to express in short words what has been the subject of so much research, study and monographs, and certainly will be for a long time to come. Our entire generation survived this war, which burdened its maturation and development, but still continues to live in the orbit of the consequences of such a conflict. It is therefore not easy to talk about a problem that has such a profound dimension in the lives of us all. Of an issue that is still alive and bound in a certain sense in the blood and pain of so many hearts and nations.

3. However, if we endeavour to understand this problem before God and history, then more than any settling of accounts with the past, the lessons for the future come to the fore. These impose themselves with great force, since history is not only the great polygon of events, but is also, above all, an open book of those same lessons; it is the source of the wisdom of life for men and nations.

What we read in this book, so painfully open before us, leads us to ardent prayer, to a fervent cry for reconciliation and peace. We have come here, above all, to pray for this, and for this to cry out to God and to men. Since, however, peace on earth depends on the goodwill of men, it is difficult not to reflect, at least briefly, in which direction all the efforts of people of goodwill must be directed if we are to secure this great good of peace and reconciliation for ourselves and for future generations.

Today's Gospel contrasts two agendas. One based on the principle of hatred, revenge and strife. Another on the law of love. Christ says: "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors" (Mt 5:44). This is a great need.

Those who have survived war, like us, who have encountered occupation, cruelty, the violation of all human rights, the most brutal, know how serious and difficult this demand is. Yet, after such terrible experiences as the last war, we become all the more aware that on the principle that says: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (Mt 5:38) and on the principle of hatred, revenge, and strife, peace and reconciliation between men and between nations cannot be built; it can only be built on the principle of justice and mutual love. And so it was this conclusion that the United Nations Organisation drew from the experiences of the Second World War by proclaiming the 'Charter of Human Rights'. Only on the basis of full respect for the rights of men and the rights of nations - full respect! - peace and reconciliation of Europe and the world can be built in the future.

4. Let us pray, therefore, at this place of great struggle for freedom and justice, that the words of today's liturgy may be incarnated in life.

Let us pray to God, who is the Father of men and peoples, as the prophet prays today: "that he may show us his ways and that we may walk in his paths ... he will be a judge among the nations and an arbiter among many peoples. They shall forge their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks; one people shall not lift up the sword against another people, they shall no longer practise the art of war...". (Is 2:3-4).

Let us pray thus, bearing in mind that it is no longer a question of swords or spears, but of nuclear weapons; the means of destruction, which are capable of reducing the earth inhabited by men to nothingness.

Let us also recall that at Monte Cassino, Pope Paul VI proclaimed St Benedict Patron of Europe in 1964, during the Second Vatican Council, referring to the millennial Benedictine traditions of work, prayer and culture as the fruit of peace and reconciliation.

Let us remember, finally, that the place on which we stand has been made fertile by the blood of so many heroes: before their death for the great cause of freedom and peace we have come to bow our heads once again.

5. Dear countrymen!

It is unusual at this time, when I can together with you participate in this great anniversary. Thirty-five years ago the battle of Monte Cassino ended, one of those that decided the fate of the last war. For us, who at that time, in 1944, experienced the terrible oppression of occupation, for Poland, which was on the eve of the Warsaw Uprising, this battle was a new confirmation of that unwavering will to live, of the striving for the full independence of the Fatherland, which never left us for a single moment. At Monte Cassino the Polish soldier fought, here he died, here he shed his blood, with his thoughts fixed on the Fatherland, which for us is such a beloved Mother, precisely because love for it demands so many sacrifices and renunciations.

It is not my task to pronounce on the significance of this battle, on the subject of the Polish soldier's achievements here on these rocky slopes. The people of this beautiful country, Italy, remember that the Polish soldier brought their homeland liberation. They remember him with esteem and love. We know that this soldier, in order to return to Poland, travelled a long and winding road: 'from Italian soil to Poland...' as Dabrowski's legions once did. The awareness of a just cause guided him. It is precisely for this just cause that the nation's right to existence, to independence, to a social life that respects the spirit of its convictions, national and religious traditions, to the sovereignty of its state, arose and continues to exist. This right of the nation, violated during more than a hundred years of dismemberment, was brutally violated and threatened again in September 1939. And so, during this time, from 1 September to Monte Cassino, this soldier travelled many roads, with his gaze fixed on God's Providence and the justice of history, with the image of the Mother of Jasna Gora in his eyes... came and again fought like the previous generation 'for our and your freedom'.

6. Today, standing here in this place, at Monte Cassino, I wish to be a servant and herald of this order of human, social, international life, which is built on justice and love: according to the indications of the Gospel of Christ. And that is precisely why I feel with you - especially all of you who fought here 35 years ago - the moral eloquence of this struggle. I feel it together with you, dear countrymen, and at the same time together with all those who rest here: your comrades-in-arms. Together with everyone, starting with the Supreme Commander and the Military Bishop. Everyone, down to the youngest private soldier.

Many times I have come to this cemetery. I have read the inscriptions on the gravestones, which give testimony to each of those who fell here, and indicate the day and place of their birth. These inscriptions have reverberated in the eyes of my soul the image of the Fatherland, of that in which I was born. These inscriptions, from so many places in the Polish land - from all sides, from east to west and from south to north - do not cease to cry out here, in the very heart of Europe, at the foot of the abbey that recalls the time of St Benedict, they do not cease to cry out, just as the hearts of the soldiers who fought here have cried out: 'O God, who hast protected Poland, for so many centuries...'.

We bow our foreheads before the heroes.

We commend their souls to God.

We commend the Fatherland to God. Poland, Europe, the World.

[Pope John Paul II, Montecassino Polish cemetery 18 May 1979]