The USA must “drastically” step up its efforts in public relations, to seek to “save” its own image in the Arab and Moslem world: that’s the gist of the front-page article in the Herald Tribune (2/10), reviewing the various measures taken by the American administration to overcome the growing “hostility” in the Arab world after 11 September and the war in Iraq, which continues to claim victims in the field after the conclusion of the strictly military phase. Similarly, Jean Pierre Langellier ( LeMonde, 1/10) reflects on “blairism ailing from Iraq”; commenting on the policy of the British premier, he speaks of a “crisis of trust”. Blair’s crisis Langellier continues is expressed “in the form of a popular verdict that punishes (…) a decision judged ever more dubious as every day goes by: the war against Saddam Hussein, at the side of America, without the mandate of the UNO and for an official reason the threat represented by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that nothing has so far confirmed in the field”. The “new face” of the College of Cardinals is commented on, by contrast, by La Croix of 29/9, which dedicates its front page to a photo in purple, the colour of the thirty new cardinals (plus one “in pectore”) announced by John Paul II for the Consistory of 21 October. It is called an “expected promotion” by Michel Kubler in the editorial, which notes that for the “observers of the Catholic world” it is a “classic exercise” to keep “the list of ‘porporabili’ candidates to the cardinalate constantly updated”. “Will the future Pope figure among those promoted”?, is, in the view of the French Catholic daily, the first question to spring to mind, while the second intriguing question is to “know whether these nominations will alter the balance in the Sacred College”. Kubler invites us not to interpret this Consistory, and especially the relation between it and the future Conclave, in too “political” terms , seeing that the College of Cardinals “does not exist merely to elect the bishop of Rome”. Recurring to the heated debate in recent days within the Council of Europe on the depenalization of euthanasia, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 30/9 contains an eloquent plea by Msgr. Franz Kamphaus, bishop of Limburg. “ The German past, the religious conviction, the judgement of reason: everything is opposed to the fact that doctors can practice euthanasia; because the art of dying coincides in the last analysis with the art of living. He who does not know how to die, does not even know how to live“, declares the bishop. “What’s at stake in Rome is not eternity“, is the headline in Die Welt of 2/10, referring to the imminent intergovernmental conference in Rome to decide on the text of the European Constitution. “ What’s needed, instead, the paper suggests is to agree on a charter of principles aimed at balancing the interests of 25 functioning democracies, reuniting them in a community to be consolidated“. “ Europe – continues the article needs neither more nor less than a permanent treaty that takes into account its growing importance, while remaining simultaneously open to further variations. Especially because sooner or later a democratisation of the whole Community will be achieved.” With regard to the recent sentence of Germany’s constitutional court on a teacher’s right to wear an Islamic headscarf at school, the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 1/10 comments: “ The fact that a woman is democratic is not demonstrated by what she wears on her head, but by what she has in her head: a Moslem woman who would like to exclude her pupils from lessons in gymnastics and who refuses to shake hands with the opposite sex, is not suited for teaching with or without headscarf“. To this question the weekly Der Spiegel of 29/9 dedicates its cover story. “ Anyone who exalts the toleration of the headscarf of a teacher paid by the State as a factor of multicultural solidarity, or as equality of treatment for communities of believers, or even as the capacity of this society of ours to integrate foreigners, underestimates the aggressive determination of Islamic fundamentalists to promote their own interests, which cannot be curbed just when they become terrorism“. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1236 N.ro relativo : 66 Data pubblicazione : 03/10/2003
