EUROPE MUST RECOVER SPIRITUAL PATRIMONY IN RIGHTS CHARTER

VATICAN CITY, DEC 16, 2000 (VIS) - Made public today was a Letter from Pope John Paul to Cardinal Antonio Maria Javierre Ortas, who today is presiding at an academic meeting in the Old Synod Hall dedicated to the 1200th anniversary of the crowning of the Emperor Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800. The meeting was organized by the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.

"The commemoration of this historical event," the Pope wrote, "coincides with the decisive phase of the drafting of the European Union's Charter of Basic Rights" and "it invites us to reflect on the value which the cultural and religious reform promoted by Charlemagne has even today." He highlighted how this reform was a "remarkable synthesis between the culture of classical antiquity, predominantly Roman, and that of the Germanic and Celtic peoples, a synthesis based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Underscoring that "the Charter of Basic Rights is an attempt to synthesize once again ... the basic values which must inspire the coexistence of European peoples," the Holy Father added: "I cannot hide my great disappointment for the fact that not even one reference to God, Who is the supreme source of the dignity of the human person and his basic rights, was inserted into the text. We cannot forget that it was the denial of God and His commandments which created, in the last century, the tyranny of idols, expressed in the glorification of a race, of a class, of the State, of the nation, of the party, instead of the true and living God."

"Notwithstanding many noble efforts," John Paul II went on, "the text of the Charter of Basic Rights, has not satisfied the just expectations of many people. The defense of the rights of the person and the family, in particular, could have been more courageous. ... In many European States they are threatened, for example, by policies favoring abortion, which is legalized almost everywhere, by attitudes which consider euthanasia as ever more possible and, finally, by certain projects of law in the matter of genetic technology which are not sufficiently respectful of the human quality of the embryo."

In closing, the Pope recalled that "Europe, in the search for its identity, must make an energetic efforts to recover the cultural patrimony left by Charlemagne and preserved for more than a millennium."

JPII-LETTER;CHARLEMAGNE; HUMAN RIGHTS;...;...;VIS;20001218;Word: 400;