His “yes” to Europe

The death anniversary of Pope Paul VI (August 6 1978), is an occasion to review one of the most important pontificates of the universal Church. Among the many hot issues addressed by Msgr. Montini, later Pope Paul VI, which included armed conflicts and totalitarianisms, Europe wasn’t the least challenging one. The Pope often voiced his concern over a two-fold issue: a spiritually self-reconciled Christian Europe, which at the same time reposed its foundations on the proposals of the Christian-Democrat political leaders. Soon after the war, Msgr. Montini defended the cause of a Europe of reconciliation, in the belief that Catholics had a singular responsibility, a prophetic responsibility to reconstruct Europe on the basis of reconciliation. In 1954, after the failure of the EDC (European Defense Community), he told a diplomat he believed that Europe’s “was basically a spiritual problem”. Thus, to underline the fundamental unity of the Continent, he proclaimed Saint Benedict “the Patron Saint of all of Europe” (Breve Pacis Nuntius, October 24, 1964), since “He brought Christian progress from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia”. However, in concrete terms, in his capacities as the archbishop of Milan and later as Pope, he never missed an occasion to express his support to initiatives aimed at the creation of a European Community according to the model proposed by Robert Schuman in his Declaration of May 9 1950. Without going into the details of concrete decisions, Msgr. Montini perceived that this was the path leading to the establishment of a new Europe founded on a set of basic values: solidarity, peace, reconciliation between Germany and France, and democracy. Despite a number of organizational problems (the establishment of the Common Agricultural Policy, the enlargement of six-State Europe, the policies of Mr.De Gaulle), which arose in the course of his pontificate, he never ceased expressing his encouraging support to the unification process. United Europe is “a duty”, he told Christian-Democrat youth in 1964, pointing out that: “the Catholic Church wishes that the European integration process be completed with no delays”. He viewed it as a pedagogy of democracy, which he perceived to be the training ground for new forms of solidarity among Europeans and between European and non-European populations. (Encyclical ‘Populorum Progressio’, 1967).However, the vision of Pope Montini wasn’t merely restricted to Western Europe, whose unity gradually increased within European Community borders. His concerns extended to the entire continent, and included the dialogue between Eastern and Western Europe. In 1964, within the framework of the Second Vatican Council, he established the Secretariat for Non-Believers, aimed at fostering contacts with the other part of Europe. Mostly, he launched the Ostpolitik process, as he firmly believed that Europe’s divide was the outcome of the turn of events, that it represented a danger to world peace and that the resumption of dialogue was crucial to the creation of points of convergence. With Msgr. Agostino Casaroli, Secretary of the Church’s Council for Public Affairs, the Holy See took part in the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1973 to 1975. Although the Conference’s final statement was initially criticised by certain religious environments, which viewed it as having disregarded the silent persecuted Church in Communist Countries, Paul VI prophetically underlined its ethical dimension and highlighted the long-term fruits of dialogue. In his address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See (January 12 1972), he expressed his appreciation to all European States, including the USSR and its Allies, for having granted recognition to Human Rights and to Fundamental Freedoms. Aware of the difficulties marking the Agreements’ implementation, he declared: “all progress in conscience, in the commitment and implementation of a code of ethics for Peoples and their future relations, is a precious contribution to the formation – however slow and cumbersome – of a true world peace order”. This path was undertaken later on by his successor John Paul II. It led to the fall of Communist regimes and to the almost total unification of Europe through the European Union. Before Europe’s current moment of crisis, the far-sighted vision of Paul VI reminds us that the unification of European Peoples is an integrating part of the Civilization of Love that the Gospel asks of Christians and of all men of good will.