In an essay in the Herald newspaper on Friday, the archbishop, who supports greater European cooperation, criticizes the preamble text which instead pays tribute to «the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe nourished first by the civilizations of Greece and Rome» and «later by philosophical currents of the Enlightenment.»
Archbishop Conti contends that to omit any reference to Europe’s Christian identity creates a «yawning historical and philosophical vacuum between the end of the Greco-Roman influence and the beginning of the Enlightenment period.»
«What is missing, in short, is an acknowledgment of Europe’s spiritual, and particularly Christian roots and culture,» he writes.
The archbishop states that the current draft represents an «extraordinary attempt to write the name of Christ and the Christian Church out of the consciousness of the new Europe. As such it is a profoundly dishonest reworking of history.»
