Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, has appealed for the concept of an “enlarged Europe”, consisting essentially of “five poles”, to be taken seriously. The five poles are: European Union, North America, Russia, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Ruini made his appeal during the 13th national Conference of pastoral theology sponsored by the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, held in Rome in recent days. “The Atlantic Alliance explained the cardinal has been and remains a great source of perception of the profound unity of an enlarged Europe, with different subjects”. Another “great and positive fruit” to build the Europe of the future is the European Union, “which is moving towards a great community formed of countries able to live together in peace, close union and cooperation”. Only in this way can Europe “continue to exercise the world role she has always played”, and precisely on the basis of the “Christian roots” of our civilization”. At a time of “crisis” in the relation between Christianity and European society, according to Ruini, “Christianity still has a space to cut out for itself in contemporary Europe”, within a free society and starting out from the “consciousness of the challenges posed by other civilizations and by the crisis of relativism and bogus science that the culture itself of our continent is going through”. A “model” said Cardinal Ruini that we should keep in mind and from which “we could draw very important lessons, albeit with due distinctions”, is that of America, where “a strict institutional separation between churches and states” exists but where at the same time “a great religious vitality and a strong public impulse of the religious communities” is registered.
