On Tuesday, Pope Francis paid a flying visit to Strasbourg where he was hosted by the Council of Europe and the European Union. In just under four hours – he landed at 10am and left just before 1pm – he delivered two major addresses to the European Parliament and the Assembly of the Council of Europe.

These two major addresses were strong in content. In a certain sense they can be called programmatic speeches. They were great speeches outlining a clear vision for humanity. But on the downside one notes that they lacked the personal touch and the off the cuff comments that have become the characteristic of Francis’ speeches and which audiences love so much. 

The media, as is to be expected, emphasised what one can describe as the more practical or tangible aspects. Consequently anyone who listened to or read media reports would say that the Pope mainly spoke about migration and unemployment. The phrase that we cannot let the Mediterranean continue to be a cemetery struck the imagination of most readers. The majority could not but empathise with what the Pope said about unemployment particularly about youth unemployment.

This is all right and deserving of attention. But the thrust of the Pope’s speech, its beef so to speak, is to be found elsewhere in his speech. What he said about migration is the result of his exposition of the Christian concept of humans and the way contemporary society is undermining this concept and paying a very big price for it.

One of the negative effects of the abandonment of this concept of humanity lies in the fact that Europe seems to have "grow old." This was one of Pope Francis’s laments to the European Parliament.

"In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a 'grandmother,' no longer fertile and vibrant. As a result, the great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction, only to be replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions."

This is happening, among other things, because there has developed “a conception of the human person as detached from all social and anthropological contexts …. As a result, the rights of the individual are upheld, without regard for the fact that each human being is part of a social context wherein his or her rights and duties are bound up with those of others and with the common good of society itself".

This spirit of individualism is undermining the concept of  “the common good, of the good of “all of us” made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society".

The result is the increase of “rather selfish lifestyles, marked by an opulence which is no longer sustainable and frequently indifferent to the world around us, and especially to the poorest of the poor". The political debate, as Pope Francis rightly said, is dominated by  technical and economic questions to the detriment of genuine concern for human beings.

His words against the prevalent economic philosophy are very strong.

“Men and women risk being reduced to mere cogs in a machine that treats them as items of consumption to be exploited, with the result that – as is so tragically apparent – whenever a human life no longer proves useful for that machine, it is discarded with few qualms, as in the case of the terminally ill, the elderly who are abandoned and uncared for, and children who are killed in the womb.

"This is the great mistake made when technology is allowed to take over, the result is a confusion between ends and means.

"Without a transcendent dimension human life is impoverished.

“A Europe which is no longer open to the transcendent dimension of life is a Europe which risks slowly losing its own soul and that “humanistic spirit” which it still loves and defends.”

And the Pope’s parting shot to the members of the European Parliament is full of food for thought:

“Dear Members of the European Parliament, the time has come to work together in building a Europe which revolves not around the economy, but around the sacredness of the human person, around inalienable values.”

One hopes that the message he delivered will stay in the respective assemblies for a longer time and that it will have an effect on the work of both institutions.

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