MUTUAL RESPECT AND A RAPPROCHEMENT OF CHURCHES
Meeting of Chairmen of South-Eastern European Episcopal Conferences in Celje

Celje, 12 March 2002

"I understand your endeavours here as the willingness of the Catholic Church to assume its share of the responsibility for a future that would prove favourable to mankind also on this wasteland of human dignity and European spiritual values, which, regrettably, is still smouldering and could re-ignite again," stated President of the Republic, Milan Kucan, underlining that he is confident that "new initiatives will arise for reviving ecumenism in this region where the dead and the living are calling for international respect and for the approximation of Christian churches, as well as for a dialogue between Christianity and Islam. I know that this will repeatedly strike on prejudice both old and new."

Distinguished Metropolitan and Archbishop of Ljubljana, Dr France Rode, Chairmen and representatives of National Episcopal Conferences, distinguished Apostolic Nuncio Mons. Faustino Sainz-Muñoz, esteemed guests,

It is with benevolence that I responded to the invitation from the Slovene Metropolitan Dr France Rode, who is hosting your important conference today and tomorrow. As I was told, your deliberations will focus on the tumultuous and challenging situation in South-Eastern Europe. Most probably, your attention will chiefly revolve around the situation on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in the lands of death, refugees, ruins and a severely wounded humanity. The ruins of mosques, catholic and orthodox churches still protrude into the sky there, millions of scattered mines maim people and kill the lives of children and others.

Not so long ago modern riders of the apocalypse raged through these lands. Today, there is still a state of non-war rather than peace. Nevertheless, even this is a lot after all the mindless violence. Still, the wounded hearts and souls of children and adults who survived these horrors remain unhealed.

We Slovenes were fortunate and perhaps had enough wisdom to stay out of this hell. We lived the past decade in peace, suffering only minor injuries, on the very edge of this vast European wasteland. We were able to concentrate on the future. The past was and remains a burden only in so much as we ourselves want it to be. This is often needless and, unfortunately, wastes the precious energy required for managing one's future successfully.

As is well known, religions and with them the Churches in the Balkans had and continue to have a very unique role in their societies. Religious affiliation used to be and, in some places, remains one of the crucial marks of national identification. Clashes on ethnically diverse territories with the aim of creating nation states, preferably ethnically clean ones, were therefore often conducted under religious ensign. Between 1991 and 1995, and even later, national paramilitary and military groups were blowing up and burning down the religious shrines of other national and religious groups caught in the vortex of war. What also had a unique effect on the fusion of national and religious belonging on the territory of the former Yugoslavia was an inadmissible and in given periods of time even aggressive state atheism, which violently held back modern and post-modern emancipation of both national and religious belonging, encouraging a fictitious Yugoslav nation as a specific, synthetic nation. It is for this precise reason that it could not serve as a positive value of political integration and was increasingly turning into a strait jacket for nations and people.

Catholic, Christian-Orthodox and Muslim religions as legitimate spiritual movements and Church/religious communities more or less shared the fate of these contradictory and conflicting events. However, it needs to be clearly stated that the latest wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia were neither civil nor religious wars. The winds of war were triggered by an aggressive Greater Serbian state nationalism driven to the extreme, which struck fertile ground with a large part of the Serbian people by manipulating the fictitious myth about the particular mission of Serbianism in these parts of the world. It can only be regretted that this inadmissible and antihuman game was, at least in part, also accepted by the Serb Orthodox Church and that attempts were made at drawing in and functionalising other Churches in the Balkans as well.

I understand your endeavours here as the willingness of the Catholic Church to assume its share of the responsibility for a future that would prove favourable to mankind also on this wasteland of human dignity and European spiritual values, which, regrettably, is still smouldering and could re-ignite again. That would again be our common defeat, the defeat of the spiritual vision of a future Europe believing in peace, tolerance, cooperation and common spiritual values. I believe that new initiatives will arise for reviving ecumenism in this region where the dead and the living are calling for mutual respect and for the rapprochement of Christian churches, as well as for a dialogue between Christianity and Islam. I know that this will repeatedly strike on prejudice both old and new. I stand convinced, however, that resilient and persistent effort will sooner or later yield great results. I am reinforced in my belief by the talks I held with His Holiness Pope John Paul II, as well as with Patriarch Pavle of the Serb Orthodox Church and Reis Ul Ulema Ceriæ of Sarajevo. A promising sign and message was also conveyed from the recent conference in Assisi. I believe that the Catholic Church is capable and willing to expand the area of spiritual freedom in Europe's South-East, a freedom that is at least as important as man's political, economic and social freedom. Personal religious freedom, whereby anyone, regardless of their national belonging, may follow his conscience in the search for the meaning of human life and for the most profound personal guiding principles, whereby every person is entitled to their own truth about the world and about society, such freedom creates a new balance between man's individual and collective rights, treading a European path towards modern nation states of citizens as free men. That is also a good way towards such a relationship between Church and state where state authorities recognise the positive social role of religion while remaining perfectly neutral as to people's individual religious and other beliefs.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
To my eyes your conference has a broader social significance. I believe that in itself this conference will be a positive message to other churches in South Eastern Europe. I believe that it will deliver a unique invitation to common deliberation on how to respond to the position that can already be heard for several years from all the battlegrounds and devastated lands in South Eastern Europe. That message says: »We can never live with them again«, meaning we, the members of one nation, culture, religion, civilisation, can never again live with them, members of another nation, culture, religion and civilisation. It is our common duty as a civilisation to respond to this calamitous thesis with greatest resolve, saying »You must live together«. Just like people throughout Europe coexist creatively and in tolerance regardless of the differences in their national, cultural, religious or civilisational belonging. This is the way of overcoming a world of hatred and of driving out the ghosts of the past. Our duty, however, the duty of all of Europe, is to help these unfortunate nations in their search for a form of coexistence. This message, coupled with an invitation to other Churches to join that message, would have a great moral effect and would constitute an important contribution to peace, security and prosperity in these forsaken lands. I have no doubt in your strong resolve to reach the goals this conference is set to achieve to everyone’s satisfaction. I also believe that our assessments of the fundamental situation and the chances for positive development are very much alike.

I wish you every success in your work and, to all guests from abroad, I wish a particularly pleasant stay here in Slovenia.