On June 20 the heads of state and government of the 25 member states of the European Union, meeting in Brussels, backed the official and the final draft of the Constitutional Treaty of the EU. Although the Constitutional Treaty was adopted by consensus, this does not mean that each member state was fully satisfied with the draft, although it marked an important milestone in the process of European integration.
Although I do not intend to enter deeply into the merits of the text, I must express my disappointment that it failed to recognise Europe's Christian roots. I was especially disappointed by the opposition to such recognition by some governments, especially France and Belgium, who openly disregarded the historical evidence and the Christian identity of Europe's peoples.
Unfortunately, these governments, ignored the views of other countries, including Malta, which had worked hard to give due recognition in the treaty's text to Europe's recognised religious heritage. Such an inclusion would have enriched European integration, which has always been supported and fully encouraged by the Catholic Church.
Speaking on September 21 at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, Pope John Paul II said that globalisation too needs to be enriched by Christian values. He urged governments to do everything possible so that "the convictions that stem from this [Christian] identity may be affirmed both in the national as well as in the international realm".
Such words as unity and integration are not new in the context of Europe's reconstruction. After the destruction of World War II, far-sighted statesmen like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, holding out the promise of unification rather than division and peace instead of war, bravely got down to the hard task of rebuilding and promoting Europe as the natural bastion of civilisation in the context of the new international order.
In the succeeding decades, many others promoted the great cultural, economic and political movement for a united Europe.
But now that the Constitutional Treaty of the EU failed to officially recognise Europe's Christian roots, many questions have been raised. Are the economic and trade treaties enough to strengthen European unity? On which ideal is integration to be based? How can unity prevail over persistent nationalistic interests? How far can the cultural institutions be safeguarded from political interference? What attitude will European governments take towards the swelling number of immigrants from Third World countries knocking at Europe's door looking for solidarity and asylum, which is so often denied?
There is no doubt that the Christian faith played an important role in defining the cultural and spiritual profile of the people of Europe. Over the course of centuries, its values became deeply embedded in the European consciousness, thanks to the great civilising mission of people like St Benedict and monasticism.
St Benedict (Norcia, 480-Montecassino, 547) the father of Western Monasticism, created small religious communities surviving only on co-operative production of corn, wine and oil, the basic social and economic cell for the survival of the old historic Rome at the dawn of the Middle ages.
St Benedict was the link between the classical period and the new era. Emphasising his imposing gravity, stability, authority and moderation, he can be seen as "one of the last of the Romans" (Dr Knowles) - the embodiment, in an age of shifting landmarks and peoples, of the first Europeans.
St Benedict was extraordinarily able to find the right synthesis between religious faith and reason, between work and contemplation - Ora et labora, between the need of individuals and common life, between independence and authority. He instilled such a deep and learned sense of humanism, that after more than 15 centuries, still may be considered as the milestone while talking about the basic form of cohesion between the peoples of Europe.
The little monastic community (later the abbey, the monastery), that cell into which the rural economy of Europe withdraw from the wreckage of the Roman Empire, started in the silent and picturesque countryside surrounding Subiaco, in central Italy.
This great and positive experience which continued and developed at Montecassino, began to expand first in Italy and then throughout the rest of Europe under the protection of feudal institutions and carried forward as an essential part of advancing Christendom.
The monasteries constituted the centres of civilised living. Soon they became oases of love, learning and light for the next one thousand years. The monsteries kept alive the ideas and learning of earlier civilisations but they also generated a new ideal: civilisation based not on military might, but on worship, service and love.
The little communities that grew up around the monasteries were declared free by the monks and many of them became the new towns of the new states of Europe. The remarkable influence of St Benedict on the European continent, in the words of the late Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, "obviously of far greater significance than he himself could possibly foresee".
The success of Benedictine monasticism expansion was due to the Rule which St Benedict wrote for his monks and for himself. Its common sense, compassionate awareness of the limits of human endurance and coherence as an ascetical programme recommended it to its contemporaries, becoming the only one to be observed as from the eighth century.
The Rule had a great influence on the development of Western civilisation and governed the mode of life in Western Christianity. However, in the tenth century, during the great Cluniac reform of the Benedictine order, the Benedictine monks were involved from time to time in political issues without hindering the real aim of the monastic life: to seek God. Those were years of resistance in which the reforming movement of Cluny started building the monastic concept of a pioneering, colonising institutions afresh, based on the guidelines of the Benedictine Rule, inspired by evangelical teaching and the fundamental values of rule of law.
No one ever dismissed Cluny's commitment to a united Europe mediating between rival factions, defusing tensions, drawing people from different countries together in spite of their culture, mentality and religious belief, enhancing efficient commercial and business relations based on fair trade and sound human and moral values. It was under the Abbot St Odilo that Cluny first conceived a European political ideal by mobilising Christian forces who fought for the liberation of Spain from Islam.
The Benedictines were behind the intense mediation between the Papacy and the Emperor, such as Canossa in 1077, the promotion of the first peace movement: the Truce of God, and the staunch and determined stand against the lay and Church feudal system.
The reform of Cluny was important also for the Western world. Cluny's social policies: care for the poor and the abandoned, organisation of pilgrimages and giving hospitality to pilgrims (they built, and were the first in running hostels along the route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain), helped to change vast territories into fertile and arable lands and anticipated the social issues of those times.
Thus Cluny established itself as the symbol of medieval universalism and very soon acquired an international dimension. The monks of Cluny knew that by calling for peace and prosperity, by spreading civilisation, learning and culture, people can play an active role in shaping society and living together.
This humanistic tradition based on a disciplined civilisation of love and mutual respect is still actual, and must of course be taken in account, and not discarded, by Europe of the third millennium looking forward to ratify the Constitutional Treaty of the EU. The wisdom of St Benedict and the Benedictine charisma are timeless.
When in 597 St Gregory the Great, a devout disciple of St Benedict and one of the greatest Church reformers, sent the first monks to England, he did not foresee that besides converting the English natives, he would become the forerunner of an integrated Europe.
Following this mission, the Benedictine ideal spread all over Europe and influenced people with St Benedict's practical and religious insights. So it is no wonder that Pope Pius XII called St Benedict "Patron of Europe" and Pope Paul VI 40 years ago declared him "Primary Patron of Europe".
European governments must look back to their predecessors and pioneers who consciously admitted more than once that they were profoundly inspired by the Rule of St Benedict while striving to put a solid basis for a strong structure for a united Europe. If Europe truly wants to succeed in its integration, it must turn again to the Rule of St Benedict.
"Without a serious recovery stressing the value of persons and an idiosyncratic mode of expression, which considers every human being as a natural bearer of rights (political, economic, social, cultural and religious), all the plans to strengthen the structures for Europe's integration and unity between the European peoples will turn deceptive and vain" (The Paper of Subiaco, 2003).