(Strasbourg) To reconcile the human person with creation, to reconcile people with each other, with themselves; this was the concluding message to Europe that John Paul II delivered on 11 October 1988 during his visit – the first by a Pope – to the European Parliament. It was an emblematic journey to Strasbourg, during which the Pope who came from Poland, at the time still part of the Communist bloc, delivered a speech with strong ethical, spiritual and political overtones, offering a glimpse of the reunification of the continent, of a Europe that “breathes with two lungs”, East and West.
It is important to recall that this occurred a year prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, on 9 November 1989, and the subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
Karol Wojtyla, whose memory we commemorate on the 20th anniversary of his death (2 April 2005), certainly deserves to be remembered as the Pope who devoted countless – perhaps the greatest number – of speeches, journeys and exhortations to Europe. Notably, Pope John Paul II was the pontiff who presided over two Special Assemblies for Europe: in 1991 and 1999, wrote the exhortation “Ecclesia in Europa” (2003) and the encyclical “Slavorum Apostoli” (1985), and proclaimed five of the six patron saints of Europe (Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, in addition to Benedict of Nursia, proclaimed patron saint of Europe by Paul VI). His repeated interventions and appeals for the recognition of the “Christian roots of Europe”, to be included in the drafting of the European Constitution at the dawn of the new millennium, are impossible to forget.
Wojtyla’s arrival in Strasbourg coincided with a period of social and political unrest in Eastern Europe. These were the years of Lech Walesa’s Polish trade union Solidarność, of Mikhail Gorbachev’s ”Glasnost” and ”Perestroika” in the USSR, and of Vaclav Havel, one of the founding members of Charter 77 and a key leader of the subsequent ”Velvet Revolution”.
Addressing MEPs in the Strasbourg hemicycle of the European Parliament, a few years after its election by universal suffrage (the Pope had addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe three days before), Pope John Paul II recognised the “increased prestige” and “authority” of the Parliament,
that appears to citizens “as the institution that will guide their future as a democratic community […] desirous of integrating their economy more closely, of harmonizing their legislations on a number of points, and of offering all their citizens greater freedom in the perspective of mutual cooperation and cultural enrichment.” The Pope went on to confer on the then European Economic Community, comprising at that time 12 member states, a role and a vocation at the service of peace, democracy, respect for the rights and dignity of human persons, openness to the world and international cooperation, with a special commitment to promoting the development of poor countries.
He went on to emphasise: “Since the end of the last World War, the Holy See has not ceased to encourage the development of Europe. Assuredly, the Church’s mission is to make known to all people their salvation in Jesus Christ.” “How could the Church not be interested in the development of Europe, a Church which for centuries has been implanted in the people that constitute it and brought them to the baptismal fonts, people for whom the Christian faith is and remains one of the elements of their cultural identity.”
The Pope’s speech was interrupted several times by rounds of applause, even when he said that Europe may also “search for its soul and for an inspiration that is able to assure its spiritual cohesion.”
In a well-known passage, somewhat prophetic, he said: “Other nations will certainly be able to join those that are represented here today. As the Supreme Pastor of the universal Church, myself a native of Eastern Europe and knowing the aspirations of the Slavic peoples, the other ‘lung’ of our common European homeland, my wish is that Europe, willingly giving itself free institutions, may one day reach the full dimensions that geography and, even more, history have given it. How could I not hope for this, since the culture inspired by the Christian faith has so profoundly marked the history of all the peoples of Europe, Greek and Latin, Germanic and Slavic, despite all the vicissitudes and beyond all social systems and ideologies.”
The Pope’s address, as noted above, had strong political overtones, while emphasising the ‘transcendent dimension’ of life, of civil coexistence, of European construction, in a fruitful encounter of faith and life. “At this point, it seems important tome to mention that it was from the soil of Christianity that modern Europe took the principle – often lost sight of during the centuries of ‘Christendom’ – that most fundamentally governs its public life: I mean the principle, proclaimed for the first time by Christ, of the distinction between ‘what is Caesar’ and ‘what is God’s’ (cf. Mt 22:21). This essential distinction between the arranging of the external framework of the earthly city and the autonomy; of the person becomes clear in light of the respective natures of the political community, to which all citizens necessarily belong, and that of the religious community, to which believers freely adhere.”
This passage, in which the speaker reinterprets the secular nature of politics and its institutions, continues as follows:
“No plan of society will ever be able to establish the Kingdom of God, that is, eschatological perfection, on this earth. Political messianism most often leads to the worst tyrannies. The structures that societies set up for themselves never have a definitive value; they can no longer seek for themselves all the goods to which man aspires. In particular, they cannot be a substitute for human conscience or for the search for truth and the absolute. Public life and the good order of the State rest on the virtue of the citizens, which invites them to subordinate their individual interests to the common good, to establish and recognize as law only that which is objectively true and good.” Moreover, “To say that it is up to the religious community, and not the State, to manage ‘what is God’s’, is to impose a healthy limit on man’s power, and this limit is that of the realm of conscience, of final ends, of the ultimate meaning of existence, of openness to the absolute, of tending towards a fulfilment not yet reached, which stimulates our efforts and inspires right choices.”
In his concluding remarks, the Pope highlights “three areas where it seems to me that the integrated Europe of tomorrow, open to the eastern part of the continent and generous towards the other hemisphere, should take up its role as a beacon in world civilization:
First of all, “in reconciling the person with creation, in taking care to preserve the integrity of nature, its flora and fauna, its air and rivers, its delicate balances, its limited resources, its beauty that praises the glory of the Creator”. Second, “in reconciling people with one another, in accepting those of various cultural traditions or schools of thought, in welcoming the foreigners and refugees, in being open to the spiritual riches of peoples from other continents.” Finally, “in reconciling the person with himself: yes, in working to remake an integrated and complete vision of the person and of the world, in contact with cultures of suspicion and dehumanization, a vision in which science, technological ability and art do not exclude, but elicit, faith in God.”
