The real unity

It’s an annual invitation made to scholars, university researchers, laypeople and priests of every nation “engaged in various ways in studying the cultural and religious roots of the old continent”: at the Paul VI Ambrosian Foundation at Gazzada (Varese – Italy) everything is ready for the 28th European Week, due to be held from 5 to 9 September on the theme: “Religious history of Islam in the Balkans”. FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO TODAY. “Continuing the project of examining the religious and cultural roots of Europe begun in 1979, the Foundation, in liaison with the Catholic University of Milan, after examining in previous years the Balkan states that are mainly Catholic (Croatia and Slovenia), and those mainly Orthodox (Serbia and Bulgaria), now proposes to analyse phases, methods and results of the conquest and spread of Islam during the Ottoman domination over a large part of South-East Europe and more especially in Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Greece”, explains LUCIANO VACCARO , secretary of the sponsoring Foundation in a briefing to SIR outlining the contents and programmes of the international conference due to be held in September. “With the end of Ottoman rule – he points out – the territorial expansion of Islam was arrested; but its presence has remained numerically significant, culturally strong, and today is also expressing a political dimension”. INTERNATIONAL AMBIENCE. The European Week at Gazzada (info: e-mail fapgazzada@tin.it none ) has over the years been brought to the attention of researchers of the history of the religions and cultures of the continent, “because it provides an opportunity for an international forum of studies in this field”, adds Vaccaro. Apart from questions of historical interest, the conference has also gained a reputation “for the opportunity it provides for assessment and dialogue” on questions of great actuality. The main speakers at this year’s meeting will include: Nenad Moaèanin (University of Zagreb), Eustratios Zeghinis (University of Salonica), Aksinia Džurova and Maria Polimirova (Sofia), Rade Petrovi? (Sarajevo), Alexandre Popovic and Xavier Bougarel (Centre d’histoire du domaine turc, Paris), Darko Tanaskovi? (ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro to the Holy See), Luan Omari (Academy of Sciences in Tirana). THE CHURCHES AND PEACE. “Particular attention will be devoted during this year’s conference – explains the secretary of the Foundation – to the presence of Islam in the social history and in the material culture” of the Balkans, “with special reference to the influences of Islamic religious life on the Balkan world. The relation with the other religious confessions, especially Catholic and Orthodox, will also be analysed”. The conference will have important implications in the perspective of the “European vocation” of the Western Balkans and of Turkey, and of the EU membership negotiations that various countries in the region have begun. “As in the past, unresolved political, national and religious questions remain in this area,” points out Vaccaro, who closely liased with Sante Graciotti, of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, in defining the theme of the seminar. “In this context the Christian Churches seem challenged by a precise historic responsibility: that of assuming the task, that can no longer be deferred, of making pacification really possible”. A PRO-EUROPEAN POPE. The conference in September will also mark the first stage of the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the Paul VI Ambrosian Foundation. The Pope who brought the Second Vatican Council to its conclusion is also remembered for numerous pro-European interventions. One of the best known and most inspired was pronounced when he was still Archbishop of Milan, in his speech to the Casa Alpina at Motta on 12 September 1958. This was not long after the signing of the Treaties instituting the European Economic Community; in spite of the enthusiasm for the start of the process of integration between six Western states (Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg), Giovanni Battista Montini recalled that real unity must be founded on deeper roots that mere economic collaboration. THE WORDS OF MONTINI. “This union that is taking shape and that oscillates, from phase to phase, between a conclusion that seems easy and a disappointment that seems fatal, is a fragile and precarious union”, said Montini on that occasion. “The components of this unity do not wish to surrender anything of their sovereignty and we are therefore heading towards a peace that may be equivocal, fragile and precarious”. According to Montini, “Only once a circulation of thought, of blood and friendship, and of a common culture, have fused together the various peoples that compose this Europe, […] will a spiritual unity be achieved. We have a need for a single spirit to compose Europe, so that its unity be strong, coherent, conscientious and beneficent”. The project “Christian Europe” has indeed been a constant of the Foundation for thirty years. On 12 September it will welcome Cardinal Attilio Nicora for the lectio magistralis on “Montinian dream and European construction”.