The Patriarch made his appeal in a message sent to a five-day conference, organized by the Taizé community of France. It was attended by 30,000 young Europeans.
“After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe no longer recognizes the place for Christianity that history dedicated to it – it is as if Christianity were being expelled from the history of Europe,” said the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. He said Europe should remember the part played by churches in its recent history, at a time when secularization was denying “the sacredness of the world, breaking the link that exists between God, man and creation.”
The Patriarch said, “Europe has just commemorated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event not possible without the mobilization of Christians.
“From the non-violent demonstrations organized by the Protestant churches of Leipzig; to international efforts by the Pope of Rome, John Paul II, who kept on crying out ‘Do not fear’; through the mobilization of Orthodox churches inside and outside the Soviet bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall is not only the end of a historical sequence or a purely political event; its greatness is ecumenical.”
The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, told the gathering that humanity had been “defaced and injured by false ideas of wealth, by false ideas of security, by false ideas of freedom.”
At the same time, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the meeting’s emphasis on social issues, and called for “collective action to change the world for the better.”
The meeting was the fourth such Taizé gathering organized in predominantly Catholic Poland.
— Jonathan Luxmoore
