Traces of Europe

“Holy Father why do you never speak of Europe? What are the failures of the European project?” To this question, addressed a few days ago by a national Italian daily, Pope Francis replied: “Do you remember the day in which I spoke about Asia? What did I say? I never spoke neither of Asia nor of Africa and nor of Europe. Only of Latin America when I was in Brazil and when I received the Commission for Latin America. There hasn’t been an occasion to speak of Europe. It will come”.It will certainly come and there are high expectations for what Pope Bergoglio will say to Europe, even though references to humbleness and invitation to conversion have been already voiced to the Old Continent. Andrea Riccardi, founder of the St. Egidio Community, in a recent meeting with the director of the geopolitical magazine “Limes”, having pointed out that Francis is “the first Pope of globalization”, added that in his opinion Francis’ concern for Europe is due to a general decadence and to a decreased importance of European Churches in the formation and dissemination of Christian thought in the world. The Churches loose their universal relevance just like Europe. Of course, Europe’s contribution in this area also had the features of the conquest, imposition, war and persecution. But until a few decades ago it was an unprecedented contribution, at least in the history of Christianity”.In this framework is sadly inserted the Ukraine question: on several occasions the Pope made an appeal to the involved parties, Europe first, to adopt the path of dialogue, peace and solidarity: the pillars of the “common home”. Pope Francis hasn’t yet made explicit reference to Europe, but delving into the pages of “Evangelii gaudium” we discover that he is sowing the seeds for reflection. It not accidental that in the apostolic exhortation he quotes Romano Guardini, renowned Europeanist thinker who reflecting on the task and destiny of Europe offered in equally difficult times reasons for hope and commitment for the common home. On paragraph 224 of “Evangelii gaudium”, having voiced concern for a politics in crisis, the Pope resumed a reflection by the Italian-German philosopher: “”The only measure for properly evaluating an age is to ask to what extent it fosters the development and attainment of a full and authentically meaningful human existence, in accordance with the peculiar character and the capacities of that age”. The quotation from a European thinker and a thinker of Europe is not by chance. It could initiate an interesting process, carefully following its wake. Thus in the same apostolic exhortation the Pope quotes from French Catholic thinker Georges Bernanos on the lack of hope, a want that is “the most precious elixir of the devil”. He quotes John Henry Newman when he said that “the Christian world is becoming sterile, and it is depleting itself like an overexploited ground, which transforms into a desert”. The Holy Father continues by referring to the words of Henry De Lubac who said that if spiritual worldliness were to seep into the Church, “it would be infinitely more disastrous than any other worldliness which is simply moral”.Pope Francis continues in his quotations with the bishops of France who in their 1999 statement wrote: “Politics are essential: a society that denigrates politics is in danger”; he continues with the 2011 message of Italian Catholic Action to the country “for the purpose of directing individual and social decisions towards the good and beautiful”. Finally, referring to the final message of the special Assembly for Europe of the Bishops’ Synod of 1999, which laid the grounds for the 2003 exhortation “Ecclesia in Europa”, His Holiness reiterates that “man cannot live without hope: life would become meaningless and unbearable”.Quotations are never placed at random. They often signal the movement of thought across time. They are marks placed in a somewhat hazy landscape, so as not to lose our way.