Don’t close the heavens

John Paul II never disguised his “passion” for Europe: he devoted almost a thousand interventions to it, wholly or in part. His symbolic gestures and his decisions are also eloquent in this sense: from the mass celebrated at Auschwitz in June 1979, to the address at the Brandenburg Gate (Berlin) in June 1996, to the role he assigned to the Patron Saints of Europe, Benedict, Cyril and Methodius, to whom he added Edith Stein, Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena in 1999. On the question of Europe he convened two special assemblies of the Synod of Bishops: in 1991 and in 1999. In June 2003 he published the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa . The Europe of John Paul II, the second anniversary of whose death was celebrated on 2 April, has wide horizons: it is that expressed with the famous metaphor of the “two lungs”, from the Atlantic to the Urals, and it is that expanded in universal brotherhood: “ Saying ‘Europe’ must be equivalent to saying ‘openness’… Europe cannot close in on itself. It cannot and must not lose interest in the rest of the world … other countries, other continents, await its bold initiatives, in order to offer to poorer peoples the means for their growth and social organization, and to build a more just and fraternal world” (Ecclesia in Europa, no.111). Only history will be able to tell us what contribution John Paul II made to the fall of the Berlin Wall.One constant concern of the great Pope with regard to European integration was that of its foundations. “We need to forcefully reassert that the dignity of the human person is rooted in the divine plan of the Creator, just as the rights that flow from it are not subject to arbitrary interventions of majorities, but need to be recognized by everyone and maintained at the centre of each social design and each political decision” (30 March 2001). Religion is of decisive importance for the building of the foundations of Europe: “If someone should intend to sideline the religions that have contributed and still contribute to the culture and the humanism of which Europe is legitimately proud” that “would be at once an injustice and an error in perspective” (10 January 2002). But “my greatest concern for Europe – declared John Paul II – is that it should preserve its Christian heritage and continue to make it bear fruit” (23 February 2002). “Europe was baptized by Christianity; and the European nations, in their diversity, have given form to Christian existence” (5 October 2002). “The meeting between the Gospel and cultures has resulted in Europe becoming a ‘laboratory’ where meaningful and lasting values have been consolidated over the centuries” (15 February 2004). “The Church has to offer Europe the most precious of all gifts, a gift that no one else can give: faith in Jesus Christ, the source of the hope that does not disappoint… After twenty centuries, the Church stands at the beginning of the third millennium with a message which is ever the same, a message which constitutes her sole treasure: Jesus Christ is Lord; in him, and in no one else, do we find salvation (cf. Acts 4: 12). Christ is the source of hope for Europe and for the whole world” ( Ecclesia in Europa , no.18). “Europe, open your doors to Christ … Rediscover yourself. Be yourself. Rediscover your origins. Revive your roots… Re-find your soul” (9 November 1992). John Paul II’s love for Europe, his sense of “being within” its history, his insistence that there can be no future for Europe without its Christian roots, was born from the responsibility of not closing the heavens of Europe and reducing it to its purely terrestrial and mortal confines, which would be tantamount to depriving it of sense. John Paul II committed himself unconditionally to keeping the heavens of our continent open for a transcendence and a world of values rooted in the Gospel, which he saw as the way to defuse hatred and to realise in full the human person and his happiness.