Dr Martin says Ireland belongs in Europe

IRISH CHRISTIANS “ought not flee from the challenges of shaping the Europe of the future”, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said yesterday.

At a Mass in north Dublin, which included a delegation from the Hungarian cathedral city of Gyor, the archbishop said Ireland belonged in Europe.

The Mass, in the church of our Lady of Consolation, Donnycarney, celebrated the bonds between Gyor and the parish of Donnycarney.

In what appeared to be a reference to the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, Dr Martin said rather than lamenting a lack of recognition of the Christian heritage of Europe in recent political documents and events, European Christians had a new opportunity to bring the Christian message to a Europe in search of hope.

“The future of European integration will not in the first place be the result of a treaty or of new political structures,” he said.

“Europe must become a Europe of peoples; a Europe of peoples which are different yet capable of living together in unity and solidarity. As Irish Christians, we cannot and ought not flee from the challenges of shaping the Europe of the future.”

He hoped there would not be attempts to reject the contribution of European Christians to the future of Europe or to limit the possibility of Christians to express their concerns as believers.

“As European Christians, together with people of different beliefs, we must work unceasingly towards the overcoming of the divisions which egoism and narrow nationalism, greed and religious intolerance have caused and which threaten the individual nations of Europe and Europe itself,” he said.

He said Ireland belonged within Europe and there could be no true definition of Irish identity which was separate from Ireland’s European vocation.