Pope tells Croatians EU too bureaucratic, sometimes ignores local cultures
Pope Benedict criticized the European Union’s bureaucracy on Saturday as overly centralised and rationalistic, saying it sometimes neglected historical differences and national cultures. He made the comments as he started a lightning trip to Croatia, which is bidding to become an EU member and is expected to join the bloc in 2013.
“Croatia’s entry into Europe is logical, right and necessary,” the pope told reporters aboard the plane from Rome. But he also said he could understand how some people in a small country like Croatia, whose entire population of some 4.4 million people is little more than that of some major European cities, would be wary of joining a big bloc. Some 50 percent of Croatians support EU entry, while some 30 percent oppose it and 20 percent are still undecided, according to recent opinion polls.
Benedict said he could understand a “certain scepticism” when a small country like Croatia enters an alredy constituted bloc like the EU. “There is almost a fear of a centralised bureaucracy that is too strong, of a rationalistic culture that does not take into sufficient consideration the richness and diversity of history,” he said.
He also criticised what he called an “abstract rationalism” in the EU bureaucracy that did not give sufficient attention to cultural diversity. Croatia is some 90 percent Catholic and the Vatican is keen to have another predominantly Catholic country in the bloc as it grows in order to defend the continent’s Christian roots and values.
Benedict is spending 36 hours in Zagreb to encourage the local Church in the most Catholic of Balkan countries 20 years after independence and 16 years after the end of the Balkan wars.
Speaking at the airport after a welcome address by President Ivo Josipovic, he stressed one of the major themes of his papacy — that the old continent should never forget or sideline its Christian roots in the face of an increasingly secular society. He spoke of a need to promote “the fundamental moral values hat underpin social living and the identity of the old Continent” in a world marked by increasing secularism. One of Croatia’s missions, he said at the airport, would be to “help to steer the European Union towards a fuller appreciation of those spiritual and cultural treasures”.
From the airport the pope went to a private meeting with the president. On Saturday evening, he was due to address academic and cultural leaders and hold a prayer vigil with young people. On Sunday he will pray at the tomb of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was accused of collaborating with the Nazi-allied rulers during World War II. The communists sentenced him to 16 years in confinement after the war. The late Pope John Paul beatified Stepinac in 1998, putting him one step away from sainthood.
EU assures religious leaders it backs freedom of belief in Middle East
European Union leaders assured senior religious figures on Monday they would defend the freedom of belief in the Middle East as part of their support for the spread of democracy in the Arab world. European Commission President Jose Barroso told about 20 Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders at an annual consultation in Brussels that the EU aimed to promote democracy and human rights both in Europe and in its neighbouring countries.
Several of the Christian representatives present expressed concern about religious freedom in the mostly Muslim Arab world, which has seen more freedom of speech in recent months but also more violent attacks on Christian minorities in some countries.
Barroso said the changes in the Arab world were “of historic proportions” and compared the challenge of anchoring democracy there to the task the EU found in post-communist Europe. “I strongly believe these challenges cannot be met without the active contribution of the religious communities,” Barroso told the meeting. Democratic rights included freedom of religion and belief, he stressed.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said “there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy. This period of openness must be maintained after the revolutions and religious and other minorities must be respected.”
Rotterdam Bishop Adrianus van Luyn, head of the COMECE commission of Roman Catholic bishops conferences in the EU, said the progress and stability the EU sought in the Arab world would depend on an improved relationship between religions there. “This requires freedom for all faiths, an end to the discrimination of smaller religious communities and the participation of moderate forces in the construction of society,” he said.
In recent months, Arab Christians and Muslims have both prayed together and clashed, he said. “Religious differences have often been manipulated or even whipped up on purpose,” he said. “The role of the different regimes in this is unclear.”
Warsaw Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz said Christians in Europe were watching events in the Arab world “with hope, but also with fear for the future of those societies.” “Repeated attacks on Christian communities are additional reasons for concern,” he said. “If one day the Christian communities in the Middle East disappeared … moderate Muslims would lose their natural partners.”
Italy blocks EU religious persecution text ignoring Christians
The European Union failed to agree on a statement against the persecution of religious minorities on Monday after Italy objected to the omission of any reference to the protection of Christians. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said a draft proposed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers expressing concern about increasing numbers of attacks on places of worship and pilgrims showed an “excess of secularism”.
“The final text didn’t include any mention of Christians, as if we were talking of something else, so I asked the text to be withdrawn, so in fact it has been withdrawn,” he told reporters.
France backed Italy on the need to include references to specific minorities, including Christians and Shi’ite Muslims, diplomats said.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the 27 EU ministers had agreed to “go back and reflect” on how, in the course of backing religious freedoms and tolerance, the bloc could “make sure we recognise individual communities of whatever religion who find themselves being harassed or worse”.
Several EU states called for the discussion of persecution of Christians after a suicide bombing at a Coptic Christian church in northern Egypt on Dec. 31 in which 23 people were killed and dozens wounded.
Read the full story by David Brunnstrom here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Vatican Bank head in money laundering probe–sources
The Vatican bank’s top two officials are under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million) of its funds, Italian judicial sources said on Tuesday.
They said President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and director-general Paolo Cipriani were being investigated by Rome magistrates Nello Rossi and Stefano Fava in a case involving alleged violations of European Union money-laundering rules.
The Vatican confirmed the Rome magistrates’ action in a statement that expressed “perplexity and amazement” at the move and “utmost faith” in the two men who head the bank, officially known as Institute for Religious Works (IOR). It said the bank had committed no wrongdoing because it was transferring its own money between its own accounts.
The IOR primarily manages funds for the Vatican and religious institutions around the world, such as charity organisations and religious orders of priests and nuns.
Its cash point machines in the Vatican are perhaps the only ATMs in the world that allow clients to choose Latin as the language to perform operations.
Does that mean you can only ask for CDL euros, and not 450?
from Global News Journal:
Religious leaders and the EU take tentative first steps
Top European Union officials held talks this week with religious leaders, part of a policy of holding consultations with religious groups that was enshrined in the EU's Lisbon reform treaty, which came into force last December. But not everyone supports the move. More than two dozen Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders -- joined by a representative each from the Hindu and Sikh communities -- met the presidents of the European Parliament, European Commission and European Council on Monday to discuss how to fight poverty and social exclusion.
It was the the sixth such consultation since 2005, but the first to take place in the context of the Lisbon treaty, the EU’s latest collective agreement. Article 17 of the treaty commits the EU to maintaining "an open, transparent and regular dialogue with ... churches and (non-confessional and philosophical) organisations".
But opponents of the guidance say that because many Europeans are secular and an increasing number practise non-Christian religions, churches should not have special rights.
“Leaders need to respect the separation between church and state,” said Jean de Brueker, deputy secretary general of the European Humanist Federation, which advocates more secularism in Europe. De Brueker’s organisation says separate consultation agreements should be limited to elected officials and those with recognised special expertise. Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the EU was a secular organisation but spoke about the moral significance of the 27-country bloc, hinting at the need for spiritual and religious input. “The European Union has to be a union of values. That is our added value in the world. That is the soft power of Europe in the world,” he told reporters. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Poland, who spent decades in the Vatican as private secretary to Pope John Paul II -- who played a subtle but intimate role in late Soviet politics -- has spoken in favour of Article 17. “I believe there is a need for such consultations with churches so as not to make mistakes on moral or ethical issues, for the benefit of societies,” Dziwisz told Reuters in December. “Let’s not forget that religion is also a great force that creates cultures and societies. It cannot be bypassed.” The European Parliament will meet Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders on Sept. 30 to discuss how to implement Article 17, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said.
One way or another, debate over what role the Church, and by extension churches, can play in engaging with the European Union is only likely to intensify. The EU's hopes of 'reaching out' to religious communities may very well end up drawing it deeper into a complex, centuries-old debate.
No religious war can ever match the anti-religious hatred and destruction of human life of:
Hitler
Mao
Stalin
Pol Pot
Wars are endemic to man. No group, religious or otherwise, has monopoly on them.
As for ignorance and brainwashing, the secularists have their versions of those as well.
Greek faithful return to pray in ancient Turkish homeland
About 1,000 Greek Orthodox gathered in central Turkey this weekend for a pair of emotional liturgies led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as the Greek faithful seek to reclaim a cultural and religious link to their ancient homeland.
Elderly women wept as black-clad nuns and monks recited mournful chants on Sunday in the 19th-century St Theodore’s Church in Derinkuyu, a sleepy hamlet Greeks once called Malakopi in the popular tourist region of Cappadocia. Most of the worshippers were the descendants of Greeks who were expelled from Turkey almost 90 years ago with the collapse of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire.
Bartholomew of Constantinople faced the altar flanked by three crowns: Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, Archbishop Ieronymos of Greece and Archbishop Hilarion, the head of Russian Orthodox external relations. Hilarion has been a key player in a rapprochement between the Churches of Moscow and Istanbul. Bartholomew said Hilarion came on a pilgrimage to Cappadocia.
Hilarion urged worshippers to continue returning to the land of their forebears to maintain Orthodox holy sites. “Cappadocia is a much suffered land, as its churches, once magnificent and beautiful, have fallen in desolation,” he said. “We believe that the light of Christian faith will be rekindled in this holy land.”
Bartholomew began presiding over annual June services a decade ago in Cappadocia’s deconsecrated churches as Muslim Turkey, a European Union candidate, relaxed restrictions on Christian worship. In a sign of the growing tolerance, Bartholomew recently won permission to celebrate the Divine Liturgy this August at the more politically sensitive Sumela Monastery on the Black Sea for the first time since 1923. Last year, local authorities and residents tried to block Greek and Russian tourists from praying there.
St Theodore’s frescoes are almost completely gone and its Corinthian columns are etched with graffiti. The basilica, like most churches outside of Istanbul, is no longer a functioning house of worship but the property of the Tourism Ministry.
New Turkish opposition party leader sacks secularist old guard
Turkey’s new opposition leader has purged key hardline secularists and set a tentative reformist course in a bid to regain ground lost to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party government, which critics accuse of secretly pursuing an Islamic state.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a 62-year former civil servant, was elected chairman on Saturday following the resignation of veteran party leader Deniz Baykal over a sex tape scandal. The CHP delegates elected the new party assembly on Sunday.
While courting the more militant secularist elite, the CHP has lost support among urban, middle-class voters by firmly resisting AK’s European Union-inspired reform steps to pare back army influence and liberalise the economy. The CHP has vigorously opposed moves by AK, which denies Islamist ambitions, to reform a constitution born of a 1980 military coup.
“A major difference from Baykal was the lack of any mention of secularism in his speech,” wrote Today’s Zaman, the daily newspaper of the Fethullah Gülen movement. “The emphasis on secularism, a dominant tone in Baykal’s speeches, was replaced with the economy.”
Read the full story by Selcuk Gokoluk here.
Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
New Serbian Orthodox patriarch seen open to dialogue
The Serbian Orthodox Church elected a new leader on Friday seen as open to modernisation and interfaith dialogue at a time the country is seeking a future with the European Union. Bishop Irinej Gavrilovic, 80, will be Serbia’s 45th patriarch and the successor to the late Patriarch Pavle.
The church is an important moral force in Serbian society and politicians often seek its tacit support. Religion has long been a defining, and often dividing, characteristic of Slavs in former Yugoslavia, identified as Orthodox Christians, Catholics or Muslims whether or not they are believers.
Zivica Tucic, a Belgrade-based religious affairs journalist, described him as a moderate and constructive man. “Patriarch Irinej is also very open to other churches and is a man of dialogue,” he told Reuters.
Until Friday, Irinej served as bishop of Nis, a large diocese in the south of the country. He remained largely neutral during Serbia’s turbulent 1990s and is regarded as a figure who could put an end to theological bickering inside the church and strengthen its role in society.
Earlier this month, Irinej said the pope might visit Serbia in 2013, marking a break with the church’s long-held opposition to a papal visit.
The election took place in seclusion in a complicated vote by at least two-thirds of metropolitans, active bishops and candidates for bishops who have run dioceses for more than five years. Each member of the assembly voted for three candidates and the vote was repeated until the selection was reduced to three names which were then placed inside a Bible in sealed envelopes.
After a religious service, a monk picked one envelope and handed it over to the presiding bishop who announced the name of the new patriarch. The so-called “apostolic vote” was tailored in 1967 to curb the influence of Communist authorities in Yugoslavia on the appointment of patriarchs.
French foreign ministry bureau studies faith issues worldwide
France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, one of the original “French doctors” who has been active in humanitarian causes for decades, once said the only major conflict he knew that had nothing to do with religion was the 1969 “football war” between El Salvador and Honduras. With a perspective like that, he naturally asked when he took over the foreign ministry in 2007 where religion figured in its diplomatic analysis and strategy. The answer was that it didn’t really figure in it, at least not in a systematic way. Laïcité — France’s trademark separation of church and state — had created a kind of “we don’t do God” reflex in its diplomacy. Kouchner began a series of internal discussions about the new challenges to diplomacy, issues such as global warming, terrorism, sustainable development or religion. One of the results was the establishment last summer of a religious affairs bureau at the Quai d’Orsay.
Joseph Maïla, the former rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris appointed to head this bureau, explained the thinking behind this step in an interview that ran on our newswire today. As he explained in that story, the issue has an interesting European dimension, because the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty calls for a regular dialogue with religious groups in Europe. He added that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s more flexible approach to laïcité also helped bring about a new appreciation of the role religion plays in public affairs. This has nothing to do with any loosening of the actual church-state separation in France, he stressed, but creates an atmosphere in which it’s easier for religious issues to be considered as factors in policy planning.
Maïla said the bureau’s tasks were to study the links between religion and conflict, follow issues of church-state separation in Europe and advise the ministry on which positions to take on issues where religion is involved. He stressed that France had obviously dealt with international religious issues in the past, when they were clearly relevant to a problem, but didn’t take a systematic approach to faith in public affairs. Now, with a six-person bureau dedicated to the issue, it has one of the largest staffs dealing with the question in Europe. Most other European countries, which don’t have the same traditional reluctance to discuss religion in politics, usually have only one or two diplomats tracking faith issues.
“A new intellectual field, that of understanding the world of religion within that of international relations, has opened up,” Maïla wrote in an article about his bureau in the new quarterly Mondes: Les cahiers du Quai d’Orsay. “Our goal is to serve French diplomacy by strengthening its understanding of religion on the international scene and assuring it is taken account of in our vision of the world.” Kouchner has launched the quarterly in French and English to open the ministry’s analyses of world issues to a wider audience than the narrow group of officials who usually read them. “I thought it was time to present these to the public to share our view of the world, explain the genesis of the ideas we defend and the sense the active diplomacy that the president prefers.” Among the essays is one by the prominent French Islam expert Olivier Roy entitled “Religion in international affairs.”
INTERVIEW-Lisbon treaty to boost EU, church contact-Cardinal Dziwisz
There was something missing from our post yesterday entitled Pope John Paul remains touchstone for Poland’s Catholic Church — a link to the story Reuters published based on the interview that Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz gave to Gabriela Baczynska and me. Since it hasn’t been posted separately on the web, here’s the story:
KRAKOW, Poland, Dec 16 (Reuters) – The Roman Catholic Church should use the EU’s new Lisbon Treaty to make its voice heard on moral issues in a Europe that has lost its Christian moorings, a leading Polish churchman said.
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who spent decades in the Vatican as private secretary to the late Pope John Paul II, also said Poland, still one of Europe’s most devout countries, was helping to shore up the faith by sending priests to several continents.
The European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force this month, provides for the first time a legal basis for consultations between EU institutions and religious groups.
“I believe there is a need for such consultations with churches so as not to make mistakes on moral or ethical issues, for the benefit of societies,” Dziwisz told Reuters in an interview authorised for publication on Wednesday.
“Let’s not forget that religion is also a great force that creates cultures and societies. It cannot be bypassed.” Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty commits the EU to holding “an open, transparent and regular dialogue with… churches and (non-confessional and philosophical) organisations”.
The Vatican had campaigned hard but in vain for a reference to Europe’s Christian roots in a planned EU constitution which was scuppered by French and Dutch voters in 2005. The Lisbon Treaty is a reworked version of that now defunct constitution.
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
When John Paul II was elected, nobody thought communism would ever end. When Benedict XVI became pope, there was a secular end to European History. No longer. This pope will have a hell of a job fighting off gay lobbies, secular bullies and feminists but I believe these too can be overcome. Best of luck to him.