Cardinal Parolin urges Europe to rediscover itself

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state of the Vatican, said that Europe must “rediscover itself” to face the “great challenges” of culture, trade or migration.

The Vatican authority recalled this “Warning of San Juan Paul II”, which Pope Francis has also resumed: “Europe, rediscover yourself, be yourself”, in an interview with the newspaper Eco of Bergamopublished on February 15.

The purple stressed that the old continent suffers a “crisis of ideas” that prevents him from facing the future: “Europe has good antibodies to resist crisis and challenges. But the most serious problem is the lack of future ideas that allow to respond to international competitors, ”he said.

Cardinal Parolin said that this weakness is due to the relationship that Europe has with its own history, the fruit “of a deep, and partly justified, fear of its past.” However, he stressed that together with the dark episodes of his history, “there are many light moments.”

In this sense, he referred to the debates about the European Constitution, in which an explicit reference was avoided to the Judeo -Christian roots, advocating a generic mention “to cultural, humanistic and religious heritage.”

This, according to the cardinal, weakened the conscience of the continent and the sense of European identity: “instead of building Europe on deep foundations and roots, a consensus of changing values ​​has been preferred. But the future can only be built on the past, ”he said.

Although the purple said that there are reasons to worry, especially against “practical atheism, populism and religious illiteracy,” he wanted to exalt other “encouraging phenomena” such as the increase in requests to receive baptism from French young people. Given this, he urged Catholics to wonder whether with their testimony, faith, hope and charity, the Gospel continues to be “challenging.”

In his interview with the Italian newspaper, the Secretary of State of the Vatican also reflected on the high fire in Gaza, waiting for it to be “permanent and put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people”, both in the strip and “in the rest of Palestine.”

“Now we have to give signs of hope to both: to the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he nodded.

Regarding the situation in Syria, he stressed that “it is necessary to understand where we are going” and accompany “on the path of inclusion and harmonious coexistence.”

On the war in Ukraine, which will turn three years on February 24, he defended that “solutions should never be sought through unilateral impositions”, since it would mean “trampling the rights of whole peoples” and in this way “there will never be a fair peace and lasting ”.