"Any difference that might come to the fore between the traditions and cultures of the North and South, as well as between those of the West and the East of the Old Continent, can become a factor of common enrichment only within an institutional framework, which, by virtue of the principle of subsidiarity, will prevent any violent or anti-historical cultural hegemony". The key feature of intercultural and inter-religious dialogue is, for Christians, "the testimony". "Only testimonial self-exposure", which, "in its loftiest expression is called martyrdom", stated card. Scola, "fully accomplishes intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. In the individual deed of testimony, the freedom that irrevocably decides of itself uses every circumstance and every relation to manifest its endorsement of the truth". At the beginning of the report, the Patriarch had highlighted that "the intercultural character is in the European DNA" and "the vital core, in which the European identity came into being in the matrix of Rome, is secondariness, that is, Rome’s ability to communicate not what it had produced but what it had received". According to card. Scola: "the Roman attitude and the Christian attitude mark the European identity, giving it an intercultural character". So, "giving up on secondariness would mean, for Europe, paralysing its own traditio" and the beginning of "its decline".” ” ” “
