Mercy “means not running away from pain, injustice, and the many forms of suffering of our time, but turning them into opportunities of hope and salvation through Christian love. In any work of mercy, it is the human person, in his or her dignity and integrity, the starting point and the end of the action of the Church”. This is what emerged – according to a statement released by the CCEE today – at the meeting promoted by the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences in Sarajevo (15-18 September) on the “Works of Mercy in Europe today”. The event, promoted by the CCEE Commission Caritas in Veritate in collaboration with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was “the occasion for reflecting on the urgency and the topical character of Mercy in Europe today and the different forms of commitment of the Church”. The meeting featured several moments of reflection and testimony which have shown that “the human person is at the heart of the action of the Church. It is not an anonymous individual, but the person, within the limits of his or her creatural being – always in need of relations (and not only human ones) and of experiencing the love of God – the object of the attention of the Church when she feeds people through the Food Bank, when she visits the prisons, when she receives the migrants or refugees, when she visits the sick and takes care of them, when she buries the dead, when she defends fair jobs, or she brings to the world of politics the rich heritage of her social doctrine”.