Zuppi and Crusade to the EU: “Vote serves as a great relaunch”
Letter from the presidents of CEI and COMECE on the occasion of European Union Day
ROME – “It is time for a new great relaunch” of the Union’s path “towards ever fuller integration, which looks to a European tax system that is as fair as possible; to an authoritative foreign policy; to a common defense that allows you to exercise your international responsibility; to a process of enlargement to countries that are not yet part of it, a guarantee of a strength that is increasingly proportionate to the unity that you gather and express”. Thus Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), and Monsignor Mariano Crociata, president of the Commission of the European Episcopal Conferences (Comece), in a Letter to ‘European Union, in view of Europe Day tomorrow, and one month before the European elections in June.
“The needs for economic and technical innovation (think of artificial intelligence), for security, for care of the environment and for the protection of the ‘common home’, for the protection of welfare and individual and social rights, are some of the challenges that only together will we be able to face and overcome. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of dangers, such as those that come from disinformation, which threatens the orderly development of democratic life and the very possibility of an undistorted memory and history”.
Zuppi and Crociata further observe: “Together with the reforms democratically adopted institutions, there is a need to grow a common feeling, a shared appreciation of the values that underlie our coexistence in the European Union. We need a new sense of citizenship, a civic sense of European scope. the awareness of the peoples of the continent that they are one great peoplewe are convinced: it is first and foremost this sense of community of citizens and peoples that you ask us to make ours, dear Europe”.
So Card. Zuppi and Monsignor Crociata launch an explicit invitation for the next elections for the renewal of the European Parliament, which will be followed by the appointment of the Commission, seen as “the propitious and unrepeatable opportunity to be seized without hesitation. Unfortunately, it is often fears and a sense of insecurity in the face of difficulties that assert themselves. This too should be collected and listened to to show how you are the instrument and the place to face and overcome fears and threats”.
APPEAL AGAINST ABSTENTION
They add: “We appeal, therefore, to everyone, candidates and citizens, starting with the sixteen-year-olds who will be going to vote for the first time in some countries, so that they feel how important it is to make this civic gesture of participation in the life and growth of the Union. Not going to vote is not the same as remaining neutral, but taking on a specific responsibility, that of giving others the power to act without, if not even against, our freedom“.
So a lunge : “Absenteeism has the effect of increasing mistrust, the distrust of some towards others, the loss of the possibility of making one’s contribution to social life, and therefore the renunciation of having the ability and title to make being better together in the European Union”. A wish follows: “This election truly becomes an opportunity for relaunch, a reawakening of enthusiasm for a common path that already contains, in itself and in the vision it projects, a lively sense of hope and motivated and convinced commitment on the part of your citizens”.
The letter ends with a quote from Pope Francis, taken from his speech in the Vatican on 6 May 2016: “With the mind and with the heart, with hope and without vain nostalgia, like a son who finds his roots of life and faith in mother Europe, I dream of a new European humanism, ‘a constant path of humanization’, which needs ‘memory, courage, healthy and human utopia”
(www.agensir.it)
