The Pope at Strasbourg?

Two invitations to the Pope in the space of a few days: Between the end of March and the beginning of April Benedict XVI received in private audience, first, the President of the European Parliament, the German Hans-Gert Poettering, and then that of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Dutchman René van der Linden. The two politicians expressed the wish to have the Pope as a guest in their respective headquarters in Strasbourg. Diplomacy is now at work: both institutions in fact hope to receive the Pope in Strasbourg in 2008, twenty years after the journey of his predecessor John Paul II. DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE RELIGIONS. The President of the European Parliament, HANS-GERT POETTERING , was received in private audience in the Vatican by Benedict XVI on 23 March, just before the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties founding the European Community. The talks, explained Poettering at the end of the audience, “were focused in particular on the dialogue between religions and cultures”. “A dialogue between cultures, founded on sincerity and tolerance – he added -, can build bridges both within European society, and between the EU, neighbouring countries and those on the other shore of the Mediterranean. And religions can play an important role in this dialogue”. Poettering then explained that he had invited the Pope to address the plenary of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. GUARANTEEING PEACE AND STABILITY. On 2 April it was the turn of RENÉ VAN DER LINDEN , President of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (CE), who was welcomed to the Vatican by the Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. On this occasion, Van der Linden “repeated the invitation to His Holiness to address the Parliamentary Assembly during one of its forthcoming plenary sessions”. On leaving the Vatican he too insisted on the need to create a better understanding between peoples and faiths: “globalization – he said – has placed cultures and religions in close contact. This closeness may be a source of richness, but also a cause of misunderstandings. Our conviction is that inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue is the only way of guaranteeing long-term peace and stability in Europe and in the world”. WOJTYLA IN BRUSSELS AND STRASBOURG. The time needed to define the possible date and programme of such a papal visit to Strasbourg is not short. The two meetings between John Paul II and the EEC were also preceded by long and careful planning. The first “face to face” was held in May 1985, when Wojtyla was on a visit to Benelux. First he gave an address to the representatives of the Community in Luxembourg; then he went to the headquarters of the EEC in Brussels, where he was received by the then head of the Commission, the Frenchman Jacques Delors. Even more demanding was the visit to Strasbourg, from 8 to 11 October 1988. In his address to the Council of Europe John Paul II spoke of the important role of the international organization in promoting peace and fighting for the defence of human rights in the old continent; he then recalled the need to safeguard the family as the linchpin of society, and spoke of the problems linked to the defence of life and research on embryos. A part of his speech was also dedicated to the Court of Human Rights. THREE TASKS FOR THE COMMUNITY. That was in the run up to the events that would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. And in a “prophetic” intervention the Pope touched on various issues, including: the cultural identity of Europe characterised – he said – by its Christian heritage; the duty to preserve the cultural “diversities” of the individual countries; and the world vocation of the Community, whose task it was “to devote fresh resources and energies to the great task of the development of the countries of the Third World”. Then came the paragraph devoted to the hoped-for enlargement of the EEC to Eastern Europe, “this other lung of our common European homeland”. John Paul II concluded by enunciating three fields – that remain no less relevant today – in which united Europe “ought to resume the role of being a beacon for world civilization”: “first, reconciling man with the creation, and safeguarding the preservation of the integrity of nature” and “its limited resources”; “second, reconciling man with his fellowmen, accepting each other as Europeans of various cultural traditions or currents of thought, welcoming foreigners and refugees, and opening itself to the spiritual riches of the peoples of other continents”; and third, “reconciling man with himself: by working for the reconstruction of an integral and complete vision of man and of the world, against the cultures of suspicion and dehumanisation, a vision in which science, technical capacity and art do not exclude, but inspire faith in God”.