Much has been said that the three pioneers of EU
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 6:34 am
xGiven the importance of European populist parties, it was perhaps inevitable that the clash between religion and politics would eventually spread to Brussels.
At the end of last month, the European Commission withdrew an internal document intended to promote inclusiveness. A suggestion to “avoid assuming everyone is a Christian” and to use phrases such as “holiday times” rather than “Christmas time” caught the attention of right-wing politicians and sparked an uproar that has forced the Commission to do an about-face.
The debate on the place of religion in the European project has a long history, although it has traditionally bubbled quietly below the surface.
The EU includes people of many faiths and not a small number of atheists, and among EU diplomats there are different views on the role of religion in the bloc. One of them joked that the key distinction between the job function email database main European political movements is that “the socialists want the government to be god, and the Christian Democrats, god to be the government”.
integration – the German Konrad Adenauer, the French Robert Schuman and the Italian Alcide De Gasperi – were all born in regions close to a national border. Equally remarkable is that all three were devout Catholics. (Last summer, Pope Francis put Schuman on the way to holiness.)
“For Adenauer, as well as for Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi … there was no doubt that the European Union had to be above all a community of values,” said Marijana Petir, a center-right Croatian MP with a degree from Faculty. of Catholic Theology in Zagreb.
But while some leftists saw European integration as a Catholic plot (“The Church has made a triple alliance: Schuman, Adenauer, De Gasperi, three tonsures under a cap”, declared the French socialist president of the mid-twentieth century , Vincent Auriol), the European Union has been largely a secular institution.
At the end of last month, the European Commission withdrew an internal document intended to promote inclusiveness. A suggestion to “avoid assuming everyone is a Christian” and to use phrases such as “holiday times” rather than “Christmas time” caught the attention of right-wing politicians and sparked an uproar that has forced the Commission to do an about-face.
The debate on the place of religion in the European project has a long history, although it has traditionally bubbled quietly below the surface.
The EU includes people of many faiths and not a small number of atheists, and among EU diplomats there are different views on the role of religion in the bloc. One of them joked that the key distinction between the job function email database main European political movements is that “the socialists want the government to be god, and the Christian Democrats, god to be the government”.
integration – the German Konrad Adenauer, the French Robert Schuman and the Italian Alcide De Gasperi – were all born in regions close to a national border. Equally remarkable is that all three were devout Catholics. (Last summer, Pope Francis put Schuman on the way to holiness.)
“For Adenauer, as well as for Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi … there was no doubt that the European Union had to be above all a community of values,” said Marijana Petir, a center-right Croatian MP with a degree from Faculty. of Catholic Theology in Zagreb.
But while some leftists saw European integration as a Catholic plot (“The Church has made a triple alliance: Schuman, Adenauer, De Gasperi, three tonsures under a cap”, declared the French socialist president of the mid-twentieth century , Vincent Auriol), the European Union has been largely a secular institution.