“Dearest European Union, you are a living body, so perhaps the time has come for new institutional reforms in order to allow you taking up today’s challenges”, Card. Zuppi and Mgr Crociata went on to say in the letter they signed today on the occasion of Europe Day. They then stated: “You cannot just be a bureaucracy, necessary though to organizations – as complex as the one you have become – to function. Directives and regulations alone do not enhance cohesion. You need a soul! In recent years, significant steps forward have been done, such as, for example, when you have helped some countries to overcome their economic crises; alternatively, periods of stalemate and difficulties have been endured. These grow when we lose togetherness and the vision of our shared future or when we oppose against realizing that our destiny is common and that we need to keep on building a united Europe”.
“That is why sometimes we wonder: Europe, where are you? Where are you heading to?”. The text is enriched with a series of quotes from Pope Francis who has repeatedly intervened to encourage the European path of unity and peace. Then the presidents of CEI and COMECE underlined: “Throughout these years, we have changed a lot and find it hard to understand and keep the spirit of the beginnings alive. After such a long period of peace, we thought that a war on the European soil would now be impossible. Instead, the last two years show us that what seemed unthinkable is back. We need to take up again the project of the founding fathers and build new peace pacts if we want the war against Ukraine to end, just like the ongoing war in the Middle East, which broke out following the terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October, besides never defeated and now re-emerging anti-Semitism. The Italian Constitution states this clearly, too: it is necessary to fight against war and repudiate it concretely!”.