THE FUTURE OF EUROPE NEEDS OUR VALUES, OUR COLLABORATION

VATICAN CITY, FEB 15, 2003 (VIS) - Made public yesterday afternoon was Pope John Paul's Message to His Beatitude Christodoulos, archbishop of Athens and of All Greece, on the occasion of a five-day meeting in Athens between representatives of the Holy See and of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece. A visit from the Holy Synod had visited the Vatican in March 2002. The Holy See delegation was led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The Pope noted in his message that this meeting was "a concrete sign of our will to persevere in fraternal love." He said that such meetings "are a motive of joy and satisfaction for me. The Catholic Church knows that it has a duty to perform on the European continent in this historic moment, and the responsibility that she feels coincides with that of the Orthodox Church of Greece. Such responsibility is a common terrain on which to develop reciprocal collaboration. Europe's future is so important that it compels us to go beyond our past of divisions, misunderstandings and reciprocal remoteness."

The Holy Father remarked that "what is at stake is the promotion in Europe, hic et nunc, of all human and religious values, of the recognition of Churches and ecclesial communities, of safeguarding the sacredness of life, of safeguarding creation. We are moved by the deep conviction that the 'old' continent must not lose the Christian riches of its cultural patrimony."

"This collaboration," he said in closing, " could be one of the efficacious remedies to ideological relativism, so widespread in Europe, to an ethical pluralism that disregards perennial values, to a form of globalization that leaves man dissatisfied because it cancels all legitimate differences which have allowed so many treasures to be spread in Eastern and Western Europe."

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