Switzerland: cooperation between State and Church A symposium on Church-State relations was held a few days ago in Lugano on the initiative of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference (SBK), in cooperation with the International Institute of Canon Law and of Comparative Religious Law (DiReCom) of the Theological Faculty of Lugano. The event was attended by 70 experts and by a representative of the Federation of Evangelical Churches. The conference was moderated by Libero Gerosa, Director of DiReCom, and was co-chaired by Msgr. Kurt Koch, President of Switzerland’s Bishops Conference and by Msgr. Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. Some of the issues addressed include parish elections, labour law and various modes of cooperation between State and Church. Participants also discussed the difficult problem of local and national dioceses’ financing. This problem is felt very strongly in Switzerland, where despite the conspicuous financing to parishes, difficulties at higher level and regarding subsidies to communities located in cantons with minor financial resources are yet to be solved. On this last point, the experts from Italy illustrated the advantages of Churches’ financing system currently enforced in Italy, Spain and Hungary. Austria: Church management of the environment Greater cooperation with the Ecumenical Council of Austrian Churches (Örko) for responsibility towards the Creation and for environmental protection: this is the objective of the environment protection officers of the Catholic and evangelical Churches established during the autumn sitting of the Conference of Environment Officers held in St. Pölten. Örko president, the Lutheran bishop Herwig Sturm, called for “binding objectives and action plans”, referring to the Christian Churches’ commitment for sustainability, as declared in the 2003 ecumenical document Sozialwort. The spokesperson of the Conference of Austria’s Catholic Church Environment Officers, presented the projects “Basic sustainability course” and “Church environmental management”, as examples of ecumenical cooperation. The first project will start off in April 2009 and is addressed to the collaborators of central church offices, including Caritas. The project concerning environmental management aims at expanding at global level the single activities of parishes for the protection of the Creation. Finally, Hemma Opis-Pieber, in charge of environmental protection for the diocese of Graz-Seckau gave an overview of the events devoted to the Creation. These include: ecumenical celebrations held in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg along with the festivities for the “Day of Creation” and many other parish activities.Hungary-Slovakia: appeals for peace between the two countries Slovak and Hungarian bishops are strongly committed to reconciliation between the peoples of the two nations. A history stretching over more than a thousand years links the populations of Slovakia and Hungary, but it is a history not devoid of controversies and injuries that have left scars on people’s memories. John Paul II had already asked the two communities to work for the “purification of memory”, a process that has also been encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI. But only a spark is needed to enflame spirits with old and new grievances and reasons for conflict. That’s what happened in Slovakia ten ago or so, during a football match between a team from Bratislava and a team from the south of Slovakia, supported also by many fans who had arrived from Hungary. The match – the spokesman of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference Jozef Kovacik explained in a briefing to SIR – ended with violent clashes between the police and these fans, and politicians seized on the event to lay the blame on each other”. That’s why the President of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference, the Most. Rev. Frantiek Tondra, has decided to make “an appeal to men of good will to seek the way of pacification and not the way of violence and extremism, to solve problems”. Mgr. Tondra then asked for “a commitment from everyone to seek this path of reconciliation and peace, each in his own environment”. The bishops of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference responded to this appeal by issuing a statement of their own in which they declare: “We ask all men of good will, each according to his possibilities, to reject violence and provocation to hatred between nations. It is our common duty to contribute to the peaceful coexistence between the peoples of our region in the name of justice, reconciliation and creative charity”. “Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – explains Kovacik -, Slovakia was detached from Hungary in 1918 and annexed to the Czech Republic. Then, at the beginning of the Second World War, part of the territory of Slovakia was returned to Hungary. Historically, tensions have remained latent in the south of Slovakia, because almost half a million Hungarians continue to live there, although now under Slovak rule”. The current political situation does not favour pacification between the two countries. “This tension is felt all the more strongly because a nationalist party has entered the Slovak Parliament and lost no time in exploiting this opportunity. For its part, the Hungarian government, which is in difficulty because of the economic crisis, has also profited from this situation to earn the backing of public opinion by playing the nationalist card”.
