The “keystone” of the new Europe consists “in fostering the different identities and in ensuring the primacy of the person”. That’s the opinion expressed by Piotr Mazurkiewicz, priest and professor of political sciences at the “Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski” University in Warsaw. “First he explains come the centrality and dignity of the human person; a half century after the universal declaration of human rights we are witnessing a great debate on the matter in Western culture: I am thinking of abortion, of euthanasia, wrongly proclaimed and vindicated as genuine rights. Often the Church seems to be the only institution that really assumes responsibility for defending the primacy of the person”. To the defence of human life is added the theme of the recognition of the social role of the Churches, “often treated at the level of humanitarian agencies, or lumped together with the ‘various organizations of civil society”. “The ideological influence of ‘French-style secularism’ is still strong in Europe says Mazurkiewicz and “by denying the Church any right to be a protagonist in public life, it cannot but remind the populations of Eastern Europe in some way of the system of Soviet though, albeit with due differences”. Patrizia Caiffa, Valentina Conte, Giovanna Pasqualin Traversa, Maria Michela Nicolais, Chiara Santomiero
