On October 24, Emmanuel Macron will visit Pope Francis for the third time. But the most striking aspect of his visit to the Eternal City should be his participation in the annual gathering of the Sant’Egidio community, on the theme of peace and dialogue between cultures and religions, in response to an invitation. This is in line with several exchanges with the movement also called “NGO of Trastevere” around the place of Europe in the world, the African component of Sant’Egidio’s activities where collaboration was decisive, the international situation and the humanitarian corridors. But it is also the fruit of a meeting between the President of the Republic and the founder of Sant’Egidio, the historian Andrea Riccardi, an influential Catholic intellectual, a convinced European, a great admirer of the French theologians of the Council, whose work the church is burning has just been published by Editions du Cerf. A profound reflection on the crisis of Christianity in Europe. He confided in Life.
What bond unites you, the community of Sant’Egidio and you, to the President of the French Republic?
I would speak of an open dialogue, initiated by a meeting at Palazzo Farnese with a delegation from the Sant’Egidio community, on the occasion of his first visit to Pope Francis in 2018, followed by other interviews at the Élysée Palace and again in Rome, within the framework of a series of meetings relating to the world situation, European in particular. I was impressed by the President’s great attention to spiritual issues, which have an impact not only on people’s personal lives, but also on society as a whole. Because our society – and I’m saying it – is experiencing a great spiritual void, therefore a withdrawal into oneself and a fear of the future.
In your book, you devote several pages to the speech of the Bernardins by Emmanuel Macron in April 2018, which you describe as an “outstretched hand”. But what kind was it?
Those who know a little about the history of France will immediately understand that Emmanuel Macron’s speech to the Bernardins marked a turning point. When he says that Catholics died in war for their faith and not just for their country, it testifies to a deep understanding of what the Church represents for France. He grasped the importance of the Church and of Christianity for the human and spiritual ecology of France and Europe. A solid root that should not be fixed in documents, but lived.
What does this mean for Europe? It means not living for oneself but for Him who died and rose again, and therefore living for others. Thus, I believe that the speech of the Bernardines was a very important speech, not because it wanted to create an axis between the Church and the Republic, but because it proposed a new climate of collaboration and a new cultural climate . A way of saying that the secular Republic is not afraid of religious values, churches or religions, but that secularism can be everyone’s home. It remains to be seen how this speech was received, and I don’t feel it was widely received. Perhaps at that time the Church was more occupied with other problems. Nevertheless, this discourse remains and can still bear fruit. The temptation of Christians in the European Churches is to worry about internal problems and, as Pope Francis says, to go out little. But the future is not in the restructuring of the house but in the street, where you have to go. I understand that this may sound absurd, but I believe it is so, because the exit experiences have proven to be fruitful.
But Catholics in France and in Europe have the feeling of a downgrading, not only because they are more and more aware of being a minority, but also because they feel that their anthropological vision has become marginal. in society and that their words carry little weight in the debates…
I think Catholics are not doomed. We must distinguish between decline and crisis. Catholics are going through a crisis but it can also be an opportunity for a rebirth. This is what we have to think about. Catholics and the Church, in Europe and in France, have been too permeable to the mentality of decline which is that of European society as a whole. But the mission of the Church is not to be the companion of a Europe in decline. It is a prophetic mission. It consists in looking at the future in the light of the word, that is to say, of prophecy. Which doesn’t mean shouting so much as imagining a different future, different from the banality of the present, from the egocentrism and resignation that we live in. Such a Church will be attractive.
Perhaps we also need to rethink the status of minority because, in Europe, the fact of minority is suffered by Catholics as the result of a decline when, in other latitudes, it looks like the beginning of a new adventure where everything remains to be built!
I believe that, first of all, we must never make a myth of the other Churches as we Europeans have done with the Churches of Latin America, then the African Churches, and now with the Asian Churches. The European situation is certainly marked by a reduction of the Churches, but we must stop living in the spirit of a declining minority. There is not a wall between Catholics and non-Catholics. A diffuse Christianity remains, which we perhaps do not or no longer grasp, with which we do not enter into dialogue. This is precisely the problem. We saw it during the pandemic with the initiatives launched by Christians, we see it with the reception of Ukrainians by the Poles, but we only think of the little flock that we are. In France, I saw it several times.
Of course, I’m not naive about the fact that generations grew up away from the Church. Nevertheless, there remains a great interest in religious values, in spirituality, in the Church, in solidarity… I begin my book with the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris: the pathos that was expressed at that time was not just about the monument. It was about a question: is the Church burning? And it’s a feeling that has gone through the whole society. This seems to me to be an important point. In other words, Catholics in France may be a minority, but this minority is not surrounded by walls. They are a small people, not a ghetto.
But how do you get out of the mentality of decline?
Many ways exist. Above all, we need enthusiasm for the future. In a Church made up largely of old people or adults, with few young people, there are fewer of them, but enthusiasm is not a superficial word, it means “God in us”, in Greek. Let’s think about that. Here, I think a new enthusiasm for the Gospel can be a driving force.
Certainly, structures are important, but we cannot think only of structures. In this sense, it is necessary to revive a more charismatic and less structural Church, a Church also founded on the evangelizing initiative of each individual, a Church in History. I do not mean by this that the Church should be like the charismatic movements. They too, after a while, sometimes had the temptation to close in on themselves. But as we celebrate 60 years of the Council, we should return to its spirit. The Council is documents, an event, but it is also a spirit: the spirit of a Church that speaks more frankly and more sympathetically to the world.
Andrea Riccardi: “Emmanuel Macron’s speech to the Bernardins was a very important speech”