Vatican City, Nov 6, 2003 / 22:00 pm
Addressing 200 participants of a seminar organized by the Robert Schuman Foundation, Pope John Paul called Europeans not only to remember, but also to cherish their Christian roots.
Speaking first on Robert Shuman, the post-war French Minister of Foreign Affairs and regarded as the “father” of the European Union, the Pope noted he spent his “political life in the service of the fundamental values of freedom and solidarity, understood fully in the light of the Gospel.”
Schuman, in fact, helped reconcile Germans and French after the War. The blue and golden stars of the flag he proposed for Europe are inspired in the colors of Virgin Mary. The Church in France has started his cause of beatification.
“As Christians engaged in public life,” he remarked, “you have come together to reflect on the prospects currently opening up before Europe,” including the building of the “new” Europe which “means finding a proper balance between the role of the (European) Union and that of the member States, and between the unavoidable challenges which globalization presents to the continent and the respect of its historical and cultural distinctiveness, the national and religious identities of its people, and the specific contributions which can come from each member country.”