Pope urges Europe to return to the cross
BARCELONA, Spain (CNS) – Pope Benedict XVI warned countries of the danger of no longer being at the loving service of their citizens as he urged the faithful to bring Christ’s message of hope to all people.
During a two-day journey to a once-staunchly Catholic Spain, the pope sought to bolster and renew people’s faith in God and convince an increasingly secular society that the church wants dialogue, not confrontation.
The pope’s Nov. 6-7 visit, his 18th trip abroad, brought him first to one of Catholicism’s most popular and ancient pilgrimage sites, Santiago de Compostela, and then Barcelona, where he consecrated the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia.
During the Nov. 7 Mass in which he blessed and anointed the altar of the church dedicated to the Holy Family of Nazareth, he said Christians must resist every attack on human life and promote the natural institution of the family.
Under the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who came to power in 2004, Spain has relaxed its divorce laws, eased restrictions on abortion, legalized same-sex marriage and allowed gay couples to adopt.
In his homily, the pope praised the technical, social and cultural progress made over the years. However, he said, a country must also advance morally.
He asked that courts, legislative bodies and society respect and defend the sacred and inviolable life of the child from the moment of conception.
“For this reason, the church resists every form of denial of human life and gives its support to everything that would promote the natural order in the sphere of the institution of the family” based on marriage between a man and a woman, he said.
The church, begun in 1882 and expected to be finished by 2026, is the masterpiece of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, a Catholic whose beatification cause is under way.
The minor basilica is a splendid example of the natural synthesis of tradition and novelty as well as of faith and art, the pope said in response to journalists’ questions aboard the papal plane from Rome Nov. 6.
The “certain dissonance” between the world of art and religion “hurts both art and faith,” he said. Art and faith need to be brought back together again and be in dialogue, he said, because truth is expressed in beauty and in beauty one finds the truth.
He told reporters that in Spain the trend toward “anticlericalism and secularism” was especially marked in the 1930s, which created “a clash between society and faith that also exists today.”
During an outdoor Mass celebrated in front of the 12th-century cathedral of Santiago de Compostela Nov. 6, the pope said when societies and governments are no longer at the loving service of all people, then arrogance and exploitation risk snuffing out true human development and fulfillment.
Only by loving and serving others like Jesus did, even with the simplest of gestures, will humanity regain a sense of happiness and hope, he said.
For the past century, a growing belief has taken hold of Europe suggesting that God is an “antagonist and enemy” of human freedom, he said in his homily.
Human dignity is threatened because it has been stripped of its “essential values and riches” and “the weakest and poorest” in the world are marginalized and left to die, he said.
Even Jesus knew that when the rulers of nations no longer serve the best interests of others, “there arise forms of arrogance and exploitation that leave no room for an authentic integral human promotion,” the pope said.
Of the Church in Europe, the pope said that “her contribution is centered on a simple and decisive reality: God exists and he has given us life.
“He alone is absolute, faithful and unfailing love, that infinite goal that is glimpsed behind the good, the true and the beautiful things of this world, admirable indeed, but insufficient for the human heart,” he said.
Looking to the most recent chapters in European history in which God has become excluded, Benedict XVI asked, “How can what is most decisive in life be confined to the purely private sphere or banished to the shadows?”
“We cannot live in darkness, without seeing the light of the sun. How is it then that God, who is the light of every mind, the power of every will and the magnet of every heart, be denied the right to propose the light that dissipates all darkness?
“This,” he explained, “is why we need to hear God once again under the skies of Europe; may this holy word not be spoken in vain, and may it not be put at the service of purposes other than its own. It needs to be spoken in a holy way” and heard “in this way in ordinary life,” he said.
“Europe must open itself to God,” the pope said. To do so he offered the cross, “the supreme sign of love,” as a “guiding star in the night of time.
“The cross and love, the cross and light have been synonymous in our history because Christ allowed himself to hang there in order to give us the supreme witness of his love, to invite us to forgiveness and reconciliation, to teach us how to overcome evil with good.
“So,” he said to the people, “do not fail to learn the lessons of that Christ whom we encounter at the crossroads of our journey and our whole life, in whom God comes forth to meet us as our friend, father and guide.
“Blessed Cross, shine always upon the lands of Europe!” he exclaimed.
Catholic News Agency/EWTN News contributed to this story.
By Carol Glatz
From November 12, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
