By Bruno Waterfield - 30th March 2006
The Pope has urged Europe’s conservatives to put Christianity at the heart of EU policy and legislating.
Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday urged the centre-right EU political grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), to work on a restoration of Christian values.
The conservative Roman Catholic pontiff urged a new political Christianity just as Italians prepare to vote in general elections on April 9.
“By valuing its Christian roots, Europe will be able to give a secure direction to the choices of its citizens and peoples, it will strengthen their awareness of belonging to a common civilization," he said.
“Your support for Christian heritage more can contribute significantly to the defeat of a culture that is now fairly widespread in Europe, which relegates to the private and subjective sphere the manifestation of one's own religious convictions.”
The Pope also insisted on “recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage”.
EPP leader in the European parliament Hans-Gert Poettering and other leading European conservatives held an audience with the Pope in a move that signals stepped up opposition to Muslim Turkey’s EU entry bid.
A two-day EPP congress opened in Rome on March 30 involving 10 prime ministers and European commission president José Manuel Barroso.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was also pushing Christianity as a core EU ideal.
“Those, who, in the EU, refused to accept a reference to the continent's Christian roots in the European constitution did not do a wrong to Christianity and our fathers, but rather did a wrong to our children,” he said.
“We do not want them to grow up without a history, without values and without an identity.”
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