President Iohannis welcomes unveiling of Pope Francis bust

On Tuesday, President Klaus Iohannis penned a message on the unveiling and consecration in Bucharest of a bust of Pope Francis.

"I am welcoming the initiative of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the Apostolic Nuncio and the General City Hall of Bucharest to offer the public the image of the Holy Father Pope Francis, as a reminder of the warmth of his message to Romanians and humanity, a call of love and faith. (...) The bust we are unveiling today is not a monument, for it does not commemorate the past. Rather, we are in a place of encounter with ourselves and with the others, to feel and learn that, as the Holy Father said, we belong to each other, and personal happiness is achieved by making others happy," Iohannis says in his message delivered by presidential adviser Sergiu Nistor.

Iohannis recalls last year's state, pastoral and ecumenical visit of Pope Francis to Romania, under the motto 'Let's walk together!', showing that it has a major significance to Romania's relationships with the Holy See, anticipating this year's centennial of the diplomatic ties between Romania and the Vatican.

"In the face of contemporary challenges, Romanian citizens received the visit of His Holiness as an encouragement to fulfill themselves through the common good, to contribute to a society of justice and a world of love between people. The beatification at Blaj of the martyred bishops of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, perfumed on the historical Plain of Freedom, consecrated the victory of our society against a tyrannical and coercive ideological system in terms of the fundamental rights of the human persons. One year ago, in Bucharest, at Humuleu-Ciuc, in Iasi and at Blaj, Pope Francis called on humanity to show solidarity and to overcome economic and social fractures: Romania, the 'Garden of the Mother of God', as the Holy Pope John Paul II called it two decades ago, was the place chosen by the Holy Father to plead for a society that would include all its members, giving them the chance to creative, participatory and solidary contributions to the construction of the common good," reads Iohannis's message.

Pope Francis's bust was made by the visual artist Darie Dup and was unveiled on Tuesday in Bucharest.