Harmony and Christian roots are Europe’s prerequisites if she wants to be worthy of her past. In his half-hour speech delivered at the Sala Regia – addressed to 27 European Union heads of government and State, accompanied by their delegations, marking the 60th anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome – Pope Francis did not walk down memory lane. He explained that the answers to the future of our continent are to be found in the four cornerstones on which the founding fathers built our Continent:
“The centrality of man, effective solidarity, openness to the world, the pursuit of peace and development, openness to the future.”
His Holiness called upon those who govern “to discern the paths of hope – you are charged with discerning the paths of hope -, identifying specific ways forward to ensure that the significant steps taken thus far have not been wasted, but serve as the pledge of a long and fruitful journey.”
Two symbolic quotations from his predecessors: Saint John Paul II, on the Christian identity of Europe as the foundation of true laicity, and Paul VI. “Development is the new name of peace”, he repeated 50 years after Populorum progressio. Europe – is the final exhortation to European leaders – turns 60, but she can face a new youthfulness if she will be able to examine herself and work for a “new European humanism.”
Today too, Francis said, the soul of Europe remains united, thanks to the values stemming from her Christian roots:
Only thanks to Christianity will it be possible to build authentically lay societies, with equal room for the native and the immigrant, for believers and non believers.
The world has changed greatly in the last sixty years. Yesterday there was a devastating conflict, but there was also the will to build a better future and avoid the rise of a new conflict. Instead our time is dominated more by the concept of “crisis”: the migration crisis. Yet crisis also has the positive meaning of “discernment”: thus the answers of the future are to be found in the past, as the founding fathers of the EU were well aware of.
Today there is there is a growing “split” between the citizenry and the European institutions: Europe recovers hope when she rediscovers herself as a family of peoples, as a unity in differences, harmony within a community, in which the whole is present in every one of the parts, and the parts are present in the whole.
Solidarity is the most effective antidote to modern forms of populism: when one suffers, all suffer, as we all mourn the victims of London. Forms of populism are instead the fruit of egotism:
“There is a need to start thinking once again as Europeans, so as to avert the opposite dangers of a dreary uniformity or the triumph of particularisms. Politics needs this kind of leadership, which avoids appealing to emotions to gain consent, but instead, in a spirit of solidarity and subsidiarity, devises policies that can make the Union as a whole develop harmoniously. As a result, those who run faster can offer a hand to those who are slower, and those who find the going harder can aim at catching up to those at the head of the line.”
Europe finds new hope when she refuses to yield to fear or close herself off in false forms of security and promotes the encounter with other cultures instead. The world looks to the European project with great interest, but we should ask ourselves which kind of culture Europe proposes today:
“Openness to the world implies the capacity for dialogue as a form of encounter on all levels, beginning with dialogue between member states, between institutions and citizens, and with the numerous immigrants landing on the shores of the Union.”
“Development is the new name of peace”, Francis said, repeating the words spoken by Paul VI 50 years ago:
” There is no true peace whenever people are cast aside or forced to live in dire poverty. There is no peace without employment and the prospect of earning a dignified wage. There is no peace in the peripheries of our cities, with their rampant drug abuse and violence. Europe finds new hope when she is open to the future. When she is open to young people, offering them serious prospects for education and real possibilities for entering the work force. When she invests in the family, which is the first and fundamental cell of society. When she respects the consciences and the ideals of her citizens. When she makes it possible to have children without the fear of being unable to support them. When she defends life in all its sacredness.”
At the end of his speech, the Pope greeted all EU leaders personally, followed by a group photo in the Sistine Chapel.
