Pope Francis: Europe seems 'elderly and haggard'
November 25, 2014
In a major address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Pope Francis called for a Europe “which revolves not around the economy, but around the sacredness of the human person.”
“My visit comes more than a quarter of a century after that of Pope John Paul II,” he said. “Since then, much has changed throughout Europe and the world as a whole … Despite a larger and stronger Union, Europe seems to give the impression of being somewhat elderly and haggard.”
Offering “a message of hope in the Lord, who turns evil into good and death into life,” Pope Francis noted that at the heart of efforts toward European unity after World War II was “confidence in man, not so much as a citizen or an economic agent, but in man, in men and women as persons endowed with transcendent dignity.”
“This is an important and praiseworthy commitment, since there are still too many situations in which human beings are treated as objects whose conception, configuration and utility can be programmed, and who can then be discarded when no longer useful, due to weakness, illness or old age,” the Pope continued.
“In the end, what kind of dignity is there without the possibility of freely expressing one’s thought or professing one’s religious faith?” he added. “What dignity can there be without a clear juridical framework which limits the rule of force and enables the rule of law to prevail over the power of tyranny? … Promoting the dignity of the person means recognizing that he or she possesses inalienable rights which no one may take away arbitrarily, much less for the sake of economic interests.”
Stating that contemporary discourse on human rights tends to focus on absolute individualism, and not on the person within the context of the community, he added:
I believe, therefore, that it is vital to develop a culture of human rights which wisely links the individual, or better, the personal aspect, to that of the common good, of the “all of us” made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society … To speak of transcendent human dignity thus means appealing to human nature, to our innate capacity to distinguish good from evil, to that “compass” deep within our hearts, which God has impressed upon all creation. Above all, it means regarding human beings not as absolutes, but as beings in relation. In my view, one of the most common diseases in Europe today is the loneliness typical of those who have no connection with others.
After offering strong criticism of impersonal bureaucracies, he lamented indifference to the poor and elderly, as well as abortion:
We encounter certain rather selfish lifestyles, marked by an opulence which is no longer sustainable and frequently indifferent to the world around us, and especially to the poorest of the poor. To our dismay we see technical and economic questions dominating political debate, to the detriment of genuine concern for human beings. Men and women risk being reduced to mere cogs in a machine that treats them as items of consumption to be exploited, with the result that – as is so tragically apparent – whenever a human life no longer proves useful for that machine, it is discarded with few qualms, as in the case of the terminally ill, the elderly who are abandoned and uncared for, and children who are killed in the womb.
He also emphasized the importance of “the family, united, fruitful and indissoluble”:
To give Europe hope means more than simply acknowledging the centrality of the human person; it also implies nurturing the gifts of each man and woman. It means investing in individuals and in those settings in which their talents are shaped and flourish. The first area surely is that of education, beginning with the family, the fundamental cell and most precious element of any society. The family, united, fruitful and indissoluble, possesses the elements fundamental for fostering hope in the future. Without this solid basis, the future ends up being built on sand, with dire social consequences. Then too, stressing the importance of the family not only helps to give direction and hope to new generations, but also to many of our elderly, who are often forced to live alone and are effectively abandoned because there is no longer the warmth of a family hearth able to accompany and support them.
After calling attention to the plight of migrants, persecuted Christians, the environment, and the dignity of labor, he said that “an anonymous second-century author wrote that ‘Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body.’ The function of the soul is to support the body, to be its conscience and its historical memory.”
“A two-thousand-year-old history links Europe and Christianity. It is a history not free of conflicts and errors, but one constantly driven by the desire to work for the good of all … This history, in large part, must still be written. It is our present and our future. It is our identity. Europe urgently needs to recover its true features in order to grow, as its founders intended, in peace and harmony, since it is not yet free of conflicts.”
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