POLITICS
According to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, it “would certainly be a nice step” for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both politically and economically, if the country joined the EU. The website of the archdiocese shows the evaluation presented at the meeting with the press in Sarajevo, the city that is hosting the plenary assembly of the Austrian bishops, who yesterday, Wednesday 7 March, met with some political and religious representatives of the country. Seen from the perspective of Bosnia, the European Union “is a hope and a step out of isolation”; for EU countries, “its accession would be beneficial”, the cardinal explained. “Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina has a European face, so it would also be an important partner for Islam in Europe”. However, it is a “great pain for the Catholic Church” to see the “plight of Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina”: it is the “false policy of major powers that has generated an extremely brutal process of division, with victims and destruction”. “Some believe that the conflict can be solved by dividing and clearly separating the population”, Card. Schönborn argued; however, human beings “are meant to live together and a unicoloured humanity has never worked”, as today’s Sarajevo shows us. Our task is to rebuild the “mutual trust that was wounded by war”: “if neighbours are simply neighbours, with and regardless of their religious differences, interreligious dialogue is not necessary because it is a reality”.
