“Europe has a unique ideal and spiritual patrimony in the world, which merits being proposed again with passion and a renewed freshness,” encouraged Pope Francis in a Tweet published on July 11, 2017, on the occasion of the feast of Saint Benedict, Abbot, Patron of Europe.
Pope Francis has encouraged Europe several times to rediscover its patrimony and original values. On May 6, 2016, when receiving the Charlemagne Prize, he said: “As a son who rediscovers in mother Europe his roots of life and faith, I dream of a new European humanism, in a constant journey of humanization, requiring memory, courage, a healthy and human utopia. I dream of a young Europe, capable of being mother again.”
On November 25, 2014, he addressed the Parliament and the Council of Europe at Strasbourg, exhorting his listeners to keep alive the “memory,” stressing “the importance of Europe’s contribution and responsibility in the cultural development of humanity.”
During the press conference on the plane from Ciudad Juarez to Rome on February 18, 2016, he appealed for a “re-founding of the European Union”: “because Europe, I would not say it is unique, but it has a strength, a culture, a history that one cannot waste, and we must do everything so that the European Union has the strength, and also the inspiration, to make us go forward.
