Holy Father Pope Francis while addressing the participants of a conference sponsored by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE), on the theme of “(Re)Thinking Europe- A Christian contribution to the Future of the European Project”, focused on two main contributions that Christians have made to Europe and can make for the future. His Holiness also conveyed that person and community are the foundations of the Europe that Christians want and can contribute to building and highlighted that the bricks of this structure are dialogue, inclusion, solidarity, development and peace.
As reported by news.va, Holy Father Pope Francis remarked that “The first and perhaps the greatest contribution Christians can make to Europe is to remind her that she is not a mass of statistics and institutions but is made up of people and the second contribution is related to the first; to acknowledge that others are persons means to value what unites us to them.” Further, His Holiness added, “To be a person connects us with others; it makes us a community and the second contribution, then, is to help recover the sense of belonging to a community.”
His Holiness concluded his remark with a quote from the Letter to Diognetus, writing from the earliest ages of Christianity, which says, “What the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.”
