Pope Francis tells “no longer fertile” Europe to “ensure the acceptance of immigrants”
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It’s not every day that the Pope addresses the European Parliament (the last time was John Paul II in 1988). So the amiable Pope Francis I’s coming to givespeak before the Strasbourg assembly and a to the Council of Europe (a Cold War-era pan-European institution including Russia, not an EU body) was a major event for the full house of MEPs and Eurocrats in attendance (notwithstanding the solemnity such an occasion might warrant, a number of representatives underscored their teenage-girl-like giddiness and puerility with the mandatory “selfies”).
I would argue the event was also a significant one for White Nationalists, European Identitarians and all those concerned about the future of Europeans world-wide. The Pope, as head of the Catholic Church, is a significant figure for all Europeans be they religious or not. With the formation of Christendom, the medieval Church played a critical role in religiously, culturally, legally and indeed civilizationally uniting Europeans to a significant degree (albeit incompletely, notably with the East-West schism). This unity had important practical implications: intermarriage and alliances among European aristocrats of different ethnic groups, a common elite language (Latin), the formalization and spread of the Roman custom of exogamous monogamy (in stark contrast with the Islamic World), and indeed the attempts to organize and unite Christian Europeans against the Islamic invaders (successfully in Spain, temporarily in the Holy Land, and disastrously in the Byzantine Empire).
The Pope speaks for a religious institution which at one time embodied European unity and which sought to reconcile the varying interests of our Christian Kings, just as the European Union claims to represent the European interest, with our Presidents and Prime Ministers meeting in Council. For the Pope to speak before the Union’s elected representatives and functionaries is then charged with symbolism. What will he say of the European interest? ...