“ People are looking to him more than ever” is the title of the editorial in the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire (24/03), dedicated to the “ special Holy Week” of John Paul II, ever weaker in health and forced to engage in a silent dialogue of glances and gestures with the faithful who greet him at the audiences in St. Peter’s Square. Before the Holy Shroud, in May 1998, the Pope writes Luigi Geninazzi “ spoke in dramatic tones of the impotence of God who became man, of the servant of Jahvè crushed by the burden of collective suffering he voluntarily took upon himself … well, yesterday, he said so again, this time without words, bearing witness to it by his strength of spirit and his indomitable struggle. Karol Wojtyla never ceases to be ‘the Great Communicator’ and the silence now forced on him is itself eloquent of the resounding Presence to which it refers“. Commenting on the Pope’s illness Heinz-Joachim Fischer writes as follows in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Faz): “ With his condition, John Paul II symbolises that illness and dependence are inseparable from human existence, and that they need to be supported by the person and accepted by others. At the same time he shows with what attention the Church, the most expert companion of humanity for two millennia, conducts herself with her greatest exponent, in spite of the fact that he is old and fragile, in spite of the fact that he is no longer able to cope with the basic needs of his office. The Pope and the most important cardinals of the Roman Curia accept the fact that the Church is being governed for a time according to the measure of the person, even a person who is no longer able to carry out his tasks“. “ The young arrange their own life after death” is the title chosen by the French daily La Croix (22/03) to illustrate the results of a survey from which “ the growth of those who believe in life after death” clearly emerges. “ In fact writes the journalist Agnes Auschtzka the three last European surveys on values show that, of all religious beliefs, that of the life to come is the only one that is increasing. And if the positive beliefs predominate over the negative ones, hell has been accepted by a more than ‘honourable’ share of the votes. The practices relating to Satanism, well known to attract a part of the young though rather less so, it seems, in more recent times are the most disturbing expression of this“. The reasons that would explain this growth of belief in the life to come include those described to the paper by the sociologist of religions Yves Lambert: “ Apart from the general reasons of hoping for survival, we may also cite the fact that these young people represent the first generation that evaluates its own fate less favourably than that of the generations before it. Moreover, they feel more acutely than their parents the risks of environmental deterioration and the nuclear threat. To compensate for these difficulties of the present, today’s youth thus want to give themselves a better future”. There is heated discussion in the German press about the case of Terri Schiavo, the American woman who has been in a coma for fifteen years. A comment in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( 23/3) says: “ The woman, who must die, can still breath by herself, keep open her eyes and move her head. No one can say with any certainty what she is feeling… and how much suffering and pain is being caused to her by not being able to eat or drink. No one can even predict whether her deliberately induced death will last for days, perhaps even one or two weeks, and whether it will discompose the features of her face, and whether fear will show in her eyes. But to alleviate her pain, the doctors can intervene and administer drugs. This too is passive euthanasia and may be long drawn out. So long as active euthanasia is not legalized, it will be possible to protect the life of defenceless human beings. America is at a crossroads“. Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Katharina Sperber comments: “ The depressing thing… is that the argument about her fate has been completely shifted from the woman’s parents and husband and become an abstract debate for politicians and fundamentalists”. Many editorials in the Spanish dailies are still being devoted to the situation in Iraq. They point out that two years have passed wince the start of the war and draw up a kind of balance sheet of what has or has not been achieved. “Things could have gone in a different and less destructive way”, observes Andrés Ortega in El Paìs of 21/3. According to some American statistics reported by the editorialist, life in Iraq “has improved in terms of the number of telephones and the reduction of unemployment, but not in the supply of electricity. Despite the recent elections, less Iraqis are optimistic about the future than in the past. The number of insurgents has increased from 5,000 to 18,000 (and that of foreign fighters from 300 to 600). Iraq did not represent a threat for the rest of the world. Now it does”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1374 N.ro relativo : 23 Data pubblicazione : 26/03/05
