” “Daily emergency

For Central and Eastern Europe the emergency is represented “by the impoverishment of daily life” which has historical roots but which has still not found a proper solution today. How can it be overcome? We discussed the matter with Archbishop Stanislav Hocevar of Belgrade (Serbia), visiting Bellaria (Rimini) in recent day to participate in the 28th meeting of the Italian diocesan Caritas associations. What are the roots of this “impoverishment of daily life” in Eastern Europe? “How Europe was divided is well known. During and after the second world war this division became radicalized, especially at the ideological level, causing so many consequences, unfortunately little understood in Europe as a whole. The ideologies and the forms of totalitarianism hampered the communication, communion and even the organic growth of countries and peoples. Thus at the official level brotherhood was proclaimed, but at the practical level rivalry was disseminated. The more first the ideologies and totalitarian regimes, and then the globalization of elite groups, flourished, the more the emergency in various forms grew”. Is the economic and social gap between Eastern and Western Europe, between North and South, still strong? “We can still speak of division between Eastern and Western Europe, between North and South. The differences are still many, and that’s why an emergency is being registered in daily life. The lack of balanced information in the media and on the web, for example, causes many inequalities. This is even more the case at the personal level: young Serbs and the youth of the other countries in eastern Europe suffer a great deal due this emergency in daily life. Unable to study and specialize abroad, unable to participate – unless with the greatest difficulties – in ‘public life’ and hence unable to grow economically and socially, they find themselves consigned to the fringes of life. Frequently without work, without hope in a better future, many of them succumb to apathy, deviant behaviour, to the total abdication of responsibility. The image of man is obscured, education loses its significance and the mass media begin to dominate. The phenomena of low birth rate, prostitution, criminality, drug addiction grow in an pathological way, and criminal associations, or local forms of mafia, reinforce their power”. What are the Church and the educational institutions doing to resist all this? “Schools, the Church and the other local communities are not always prepared for these challenges. A true and proper educational, parishional and local community capable of responding to these new developments has not been formed. And since a strongly multicultural and non-confessional context continues to exist in central and eastern Europe, it is even more difficult to create a solid network of local communities”. What then is the task of Caritas? “Caritas must help to guide the local communities. The time of the quotidian dimension has come. After so many ideologies and forms of totalitarianism, after the proclamation of the Council and the postconciliar process, after the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, we are being encouraged to live the incarnation in the concrete circumstances of daily life. We must ask ourselves: who is our neighbour in Europe? Let us draw closer to each other, get to know each other better, but not according to the current formulae of division: the division between EU and non-EU nationals, between those of the first and second league, between north-west and south-east Europe, or the divisions in the Church herself, classifying ourselves as CCEE, COMECE and the other acronyms. On the contrary we must promote a new network of mutual understanding, of dialogue, of solidarity between the local communities. We must do so recalling that material aid without a solid basis of local community life does not create any future; that’s why new efforts are needed to create basic communities with a diversity of vocations, services, roles within each of them”. Patrizia Caiffa