Fruitful collaboration

“The new evangelization in Europe” is the theme being debated by the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, meeting together in Tirana since yesterday (until 2 October) for the Plenary Assembly of the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE). With a message from Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, sent to Cardinal Péter Erdo, President of the CCEE, Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged the European bishops to “identify with missionary boldness new roads of evangelization especially at the service of the new generations” and to “pursue the work of this precious structure of coordination between the European episcopates, which for forty years has been promoting fruitful collaboration in pastoral and ecumenical activities”. The message was read out by the Nuncio Apostolic in Albania, Mgr. Ramiro Moliner Inglés, who intervened at the start of the opening session. The nuncio recalled “the crazy decision” 44 years ago, “to declare this country, Albania, officially and constitutionally atheist”. The session then continued with the keynote address of Cardinal Erdo (of which ample extracts are published in the editorial of this number of SIR Europe). A meeting with the President of the Republic of Albania, Bamir Topi, is scheduled for this morning, while the new Presidency of the CCEE for the five-year period 2011-2016 will be elected in the late afternoon.The richness of the meeting. The forty years’ experience of the CCEE is a way “of putting into practice Vatican Council II”, explained Cardinal Péter Erdo in presenting the plenary to the press yesterday morning. The Cardinal underlined “the richness of meeting together regularly in time, which has placed in brotherly dialogue the European Churches in all their diversity and permitted and encouraged a growing exchange of gifts that has enabled them to grow together in a Europe that is bigger than the European Union”. Today, added Cardinal Erdo, “we are called to re-evangelize this continent by taking into account a human change that has, for example, resulted in the prevalence in persons of the emotional over the rational dimension. This is a situation that leaves scope for manipulation with all the risks that derive from it at the level of conscience”. In the afternoon, on welcoming the Prime Minister of Albania, Sali Ram Berisha, who participated in the opening session of the Assembly, the President of the CCEE also recalled that the Church and the State have the common task to “serve the people”. Albania and Europe. In his welcoming remarks to Berisha, Cardinal Erdo also referred to the long history of the persecution of the Church in Albania, “a country that has suffered so much due to a very hard-line regime”, where “religion was totally prohibited”, but which is now “opening itself to faith, and also to Europe”. “We are very happy – he continued – to see how Albania, which has so much to give to Europe, is also reviving economically and we hope that everyone may play his/her own role in an environment of sincere and fruitful collaboration, in full respect for the convictions and religions of each, though without anyone having to conceal his own faith to this end”. “With your presence – said Prime Minister Sali Ram Berisha – you have honoured the Pastors of the Church of Albania who were martyred. The Church has paid a bitter price for its twofold fidelity to God and to the Pope, to the Country and to its well-being”. “The Church and society in Albania have experienced an inconceivable growth over these last twenty years, but Albania has still so much need of Europe”, said for his part Mgr. Rrok Mirdita, Archbishop of Tirana-Durazzo and President of the Albanian Bishops’ Conference, in welcoming the bishops present. He asked them “to be advocates of my country in your countries”. The same family. “Diversity in unity” is the definition that Cardinal Jean Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux, gave of his experience as Vice-President of the CCEE. “In these years – he declared – the consciousness of belonging to the same family, to the same European home, has grown greatly. Europe of the West, Europe of the Centre and Europe of the East have been represented by their respective Churches in their different histories and sensibilities, but with a great passion for unity that has always found its full significance in the link with the Pope”. The Churches have also worked “to keep ecumenical dialogue alive, and with the Orthodox, issues of great relevance such as marriage, the family and Church-State relations have been discussed”. At the same time, interfaith dialogue has helped to propose an “alternative of respect and brotherhood to intolerance and violence”. We have “walked together with conviction”, recalled Cardinal Josip Bozanic, Archbishop of Zagreb and Vice-President of the CCEE. “By placing in common our difficulties and exertions – he observed – each individual Church has found encouragement and serenity in tackling the problems that afflicted it”. The link of the Churches of Europe with the Churches of Africa and Latin America was lastly recalled by Cardinal Bozanic as “an enriching experience both at the level of faith and as an appeal to the role of peace and justice of Europe in the world”.