“The Church is not just political acts, or just the culture of the West”: yesterday, those words were spoken by Msgr. Rino Fisichella, president of the Papal Council for the promotion of the new evangelisation, at the presentation of the book by political commentator Massimo Franco “C’era una volta un Vaticano” (Mondadori) – Once upon a time in the Vatican – at the Chamber of Commerce of Rome. With the author, there were Minister Angelino Alfano, Italian Democratic Party Secretary Pierluigi Bersani, and President of the Union of Christian Democrats Pierferdinando Casini. Director of “Corriere della Sera” Ferruccio de Bortoli moderated the meeting.
“I don’t share the opinion of once upon a time in the Vatican”, said Msgr. Fisichella, because “this is a political view”; what “John XIII declared at the opening of Vatican Council II (50th anniversary next year) is also true for our time: ‘The Church must resume talking to today’s men’, about an anthropologic crisis shared by believers and not believers”. In over two thousand years, added the prelate, “though with its errors, the Church has preserved the universal values of Grecian, Hebrew and Roman cultures, which we must enrich, not impoverish, with the new cultures”. It is a “heritage to be defended through a shared project”.