2. Some of this change has been for the better. Today, as Pope John Paul II recently noted, "The first positive note is the full awareness among large numbers of men and women of their own dignity and of that of every human being... At the same time, in a world divided and beset by every type of conflict, the conviction is growing of a radical interdependence and consequently of the need for a solidarity which will take up interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane".² The communications media have contributed much to these changes.

Sollicitudo rei socialis, 26.