Roots and values” “” “

“A Europe capable of being more open to the spirit, capable of living with the southern hemisphere, of being the expression of a democracy attentive to human rights, and able to contribute in a decisive manner to the third millennium”: that’s the “dream” of the Sant’Egidio Community for our continent. It is expressed in the appeal for peace that concluded the international Meeting of prayer for peace held in Aachen (Germany) in recent days on the theme “Between war and peace: religions and cultures in dialogue together” (cf. SirEurope no. 59/2003). The issue of “Christian roots” was at the centre of the discussions, as also of the message sent by the Pope on the opening of the meeting, and of many interventions by the over 500 world religious leaders who took part in it. We cite some of them. An “open” identity. “Many people ask themselves what the future Europe will look life, because the discourse of the individual nations is no longer relevant today”, observed Giuseppe Laras, chief rabbi of the Jewish community of Milan, expressing the hope that Turkey would enter the European Union: “The European identity – he added – must be open if it is to discover the best, i.e. the universal side present in every culture. Religions have the task of reducing the egoistic and utilitarian component and encouraging a sense of life that continues beyond it”. But what is Europe? According to Konrad Raiser, secretary of the WCC, “the purely geographic definition poses problems for such countries as Russia or Turkey. After 1989, none of the previous European identities can be re-established. Europe today is a project more than a reality, and this project excludes war as an option for resolving conflicts between states. An active peace policy is one of the basic values of European societies”. The founders of the European Union wished Europe to be an area of peace and “a political tool at the service of peace in the world”, recalled Jean Arnold de Clermont, president of the Protestant Federation of France: “The war in Iraq illustrates this European aspiration. Almost all public opinion in the European countries was in favour of a peaceful and negotiated solution to the conflict, under the aegis of the United Nations”. Not just “roots”. According to Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, “the values of humanism are typical Christian values, but the lack of a Christian view of the world renders these values more fragile”. In Meisner’s view, “the Church must be herself, and not be exploited as a means for the moralisation of society, nor should she try to justify herself through social works”. Peter Erdo, Hungarian Catholic bishop, drew attention to a “cultural definition of Europe”, which “was not subverted by the political division between East and West during the cold war. Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks have always felt themselves to be culturally Europeans”. Religious pluralism, in Erdo’s view, “is a reality recognised by the Church. Religious pluralism does not mean loss of values or subjectivism. It is the expression of freedom of thought”. European citizenship, language teaching and the requalification of slum outskirts: these are the proposals of the St. Egidio Community to promote the integration of immigrant citizens in Europe, starting out from the conviction – as Daniela Pompei explained – that “only through the recognition of immigrants as citizens in the full sense can we achieve a kind of peaceful co-existence that does not wipe out identities, but leaves them to subsist together with a new identity common to all Europeans”. At Aachen, the great world religions also exchanged views on ecology and registered a “profound harmony” in this field. In the Jewish perspective of the Sabbath as a day of rest, as rabbi David Rosen stressed, “protecting the environment means allowing the earth to rest”. According to Chandra Muzzafar, a Moslem from Malaysia, “Western civilization, which sowed the ideology of the dominion of man over the creation, has over the last twenty years developed a less aggressive attitude to the environment, but this change is a pragmatic response and itself not devoid of opportunism. In the meantime, some Asian economies are pursuing economic development by ignoring any attention to the environment”.