Pope Francis told EU
leaders at an audience in the Vatican Friday that "European
ideals must not be reduced to the needs of finance" and that
they should emphasise "values, by placing man at the centre".
Populism is born of selfishness and solidarity is the
antidote to this, Francis told leaders of the 27 member states.
He urged politicians to "avoid using emotions to gain
consensus".
Francis said that if at the start of the EU there was a
desire to "see the signs of enforced hostility fall, now there
is talk of how to leave outside the 'dangers' of our times:
starting from the long column of women, men and children,
fleeing war and poverty, who ask only a chance for a future for
themselves and their loves ones".
Francis told his audience that "Europe worked hard" to bring
the wall down and yet "today the memory of that toil has been
lost.
"Lost, too, has been the awareness of the drama of separated
families, the poverty and misery which that division caused."
Francis recalled "that unnatural barrier that divided
the continent from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic".
He said "in a world that knew well the drama of walls and
divisions, the importance of working for a united and open
Europe was very clear".
Solidarity is the answer to the forces that are pushing the
EU apart, Pope Francis told the leaders.
He warned against the "tendency to reduce founding ideals to
financial needs".
Solidarity enshrined in EU treaties, he said, had ensured 60
year of peace for Europe, although there was tendency to forget
this.
Europe today is going through a crisis but also has
opportunities, Francis said .
"Our time is more dominated by the concept of crisis" whether
economic, of families, institutions and migrants, he said, "so
many crises, which conceal the fear and deep disarray of
contemporary man".
But "discernment invites us to weigh the essential and build
on it: it is, therefore, a time of challenges and
opportunities".
The pillars of Europe are "the centrality of man and an
openness to the world," the pope said.
Those who govern, he said, "must therefore seek out the roads
of hope".
Prosperity has "clipped Europe's wings" and ideals have
therefore been "lost", Francis said.
He urged the EU not to "close itself up in false securities"
and said that "migrants are not a numerical problem".
Calling on Europe to "open up to the future", the pope said
young people needed "serious work". He also said the EU must
give people the chance to have children, without "the fear of
not being able to maintain them".
Europe is not just a set of rules and protocols but also a
way of conceiving man, the pontiff said.
"It is a life, a way of conceiving man starting from his
transcendent and inalienable dignity and not only as a set of
rights to defend, or claims to be pressed," said Francis.
"If it was clear from the outset that the beating heart of
the European political project could only be man, just as clear
was the risk that the Treaties would remain a dead letter.
"They must be filled with vital spirit".
The 1957 Treaties of Rome are not just a "journey into
memory" but must provide the basis to "tackle today's problems,"
Francis stressed.
He said the EU was a "political, economic but above all
human" reality".
Finally, the pope said that Western values are
"incomprehensible without Christianity".
The common denominator of the Fathers of Europe, he said,
"was the spirit of service, united with political passion, and
the awareness that at the origin of European civilisation was
Christianity, without which Western values of dignity, freedom
and justice turn out to be mostly incomprehensible".
Introducing the pope, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said that "the
Union is not only that of parameters but also that of values, of
a richness in diversity, of examples, of morals and ideas".
The Italian premier said that "today globalisation, which is
an opportunity, has created unbearable imbalances: millions of
poor question our responsibility, the economic crisis has made
unemployment grow.
"Faced with these challenges we have a duty to identify
common solutions".
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