Vatican City, Feb 18, 2025 / 16:45 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said that Europe must “rediscover itself” in order to be able to face the “major challenges” of culture, commerce, and migration.
In a Feb. 15 interview with the daily Eco di Bergamo, the Vatican official recalled the “warning of St. John Paul II,” which Pope Francis has also taken up: “Europe, rediscover yourself, be yourself.”
The cardinal stressed that the Old Continent is suffering from a “crisis of ideas” that prevents it from facing the future: “Europe currently has good antibodies to hold up under crises and challenges. But the most serious problem is the lack of ideas for the future that allow it to respond with determination to international competitors,” he said.
Parolin specified that this weakness is due to the relationship that Europe has with its own history, the result of “a deep, and partly justified, fear of its past.” However, he emphasized that along with the dark episodes of its history, “there are many bright moments.”
In this regard, he referred to the debates on the European Constitution, in which an explicit reference to the continent’s Judeo-Christian roots was avoided, advocating for a generic mention of its “cultural, humanist, and religious heritage.”
According to the cardinal, this weakened the continent’s awareness and the sense of European identity: “Instead of building Europe on its deep foundations and roots, a changing consensus of values has been preferred. But the future can only be built on the past,” he pointed out.
Although Parolin said there were reasons to be concerned, especially in the face of “practical atheism, populism, and religious illiteracy,” he praised other “encouraging phenomena” such as the increase in requests for baptism by young French people. In light of this, he urged Catholics to ask themselves whether, with their witness, faith, hope, and charity, the Gospel continues to be “challenging.”
In his interview with the Italian newspaper, the Vatican secretary of state also reflected on the ceasefire in Gaza, hoping that it would be “permanent and put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people,” both in the Gaza Strip and “in the rest of Palestine.”
“Now we have to give signs of hope to both: to the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he noted.
Regarding the situation in Syria, he emphasized that “it is necessary to understand where we are going” and to accompany “on the path of inclusion and harmonious coexistence.”
Regarding the war in Ukraine, three years old on Feb. 24, Parolin argued that “solutions should never be sought through unilateral impositions,” since it would mean “trampling on the rights of entire peoples” and thus “there will never be a just and lasting peace.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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All well and good except Vatican policy has countered attempts for European nations to manage affairs with conviction of their national identity, to retain that identity both religiously and culturally – with a Vatican ideological policy of absolute freedom for migration across the borders of European nations by hordes of Muslims, unwilling to assimilate with European Christian culture, hordes from the Mideast and Africa plus the liberalization of Roman Catholic doctrine attacking the faith from within and from without.
Cdl Parolin rather than muse on Europe’s demise must review has failed China policy that allows for subversion of Catholic Christianity, engage in personal penitence, openly admit his grievous failures in foreign policy – and begin to reverse his policy by acknowledging religious freedom in China and the supremacy of Catholic Christianity in Europe to the detriment of Muslim immigration invasion. If not he must submit his resignation as Secretary of State.
Vatican policy to rediscover identity in order to meet modern challenges is a half truth dilemma. Truth lies in the naked wording, the false premise is the bankrupt policy of doctrinal progressivism and efforts to identify with global interests rather than the rudiments of revelation, which brought us where we’re at.
Exaggerated conformity with the world presumably justified by Vat II and the requirement for the Church to become more comprehensible to the modern world has failed. Simply put without entering into a meticulous point by point approach – on that score the Synod continues to produce an abundance of wind, we obviously require to engage the world while retaining the exact meaning of revelation as it was given at the time of Christ and the Apostles.
Engagement, intellectual development and transmission must emphasize not deemphasize the radical challenge of Christianity.