Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Official Report 663KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection, and our time for reflection leader today is His Eminence Keith Patrick Cardinal O’Brien, archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Friends, a few weeks ago I was in Haiti visiting projects that are supported by SCIAF, the Catholic church’s international aid fund. A year ago, an earthquake destroyed large parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed almost a quarter of a million people. One year later, one million people are still living under plastic sheeting with limited access to clean drinking water or any form of sanitation. Cholera stalks the camps and has already claimed the lives of hundreds of people.

Yet among the ruins of that devastated city, where collapsed buildings and piles of rubble litter the streets and pavements, I saw signs of new life rising up. Women were selling all sorts of produce from street stalls in the shadow of their ruined homes and children were going to school as clean as any schoolchildren in Scotland. I met families who were rebuilding their homes with help from agencies such as SCIAF, which included assistance from the Scottish Government.

Despite the poverty and hardship that so many people experience, the human spirit remains robust and determined to rise above all that attempts to hold it back. The active compassion that Scottish Governments past and present have shown through their aid budgets and their wider concern for international responsibilities is something of which we can all be proud.

I am aware of the leadership that the Parliament has shown on climate change, with the passing of the most ambitious climate legislation in the world. I know of the terrible damage and insecurity that the changing climate is bringing to subsistence farmers in other parts that I have visited such as Ethiopia and India. That is why in 2009, at a special meeting convened by the secretary-general of the United Nations in New York, I was again proud to be able to say that the Scottish Parliament has been bold and courageous in its ambition to reduce carbon emissions.

Your concern is, of course, a reflection of the deep compassion of the people of Scotland, who have shown time and again their abiding commitment to making our world a fairer place. We have helped to bring about changes, which are often not easily or quickly accomplished in our lives or in this world because they require us to change ourselves. We need to ask ourselves: what earthquakes do we need in our own lives? Which human edifices in our professional and personal lives need to be brought down so new life can come through?

The visit to Scotland last September by Pope Benedict XVI, which was supported by the Scottish Parliament and by so many people in Scotland of all faiths and none, gave us a reminder that, in the words of the Pope, we might be called to be the saints of the next century. Just to ask ourselves that question requires courage, and to follow it through requires both courage and perseverance.

In that spirit of collaboration, I wish you every success in the work that you are called upon to do.