"Some specimens of Mediterranean olive trees testify to a life so long that they predate the birth of Christ. Millennia-old and long-lasting, they have withstood the passage of time and remind us of the importance of preserving strong roots, endowed with memory. This country can be defined as the memory of Europe and I am happy to visit it twenty years after the historic visit of Pope John Paul II and on the bicentenary of its independence," Pope Francis said in his address to the authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps of Greece, a few hours after his arrival in the country.
"I come as a pilgrim to these places that overflow with spirituality, culture and civilization, to perceive the same happiness that excited the great Father of the Church [St. Gregory Nazianzen]," the Holy Father added. "It was the joy of cultivating wisdom and sharing its beauty. A happiness, therefore, that is neither individual nor isolated, but which, born of wonder, tends to infinity and opens itself to the community; a wise happiness, which from these places has spread everywhere. Without Athens and Greece, Europe and the world would not be what they are: they would be less wise and less happy".
In this context, the Pope quoted the "well-known phrase of General Colocotronis: 'God has put his signature on the freedom of Greece. God gladly puts his signature on human freedom; it is his greatest gift and what, in turn, he values most in us. He has indeed created us free and what pleases him most is that we freely love him and our neighbor. Laws help to make this possible, but also education in responsibility and the growth of a culture of respect".
In the presence, among other personalities, of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Pope affirmed his desire to "renew my thanks for the public recognition of the Catholic community and assure it of his will to promote the common good of Greek society, directing in this direction the universality that characterizes it, with the desire that in practical terms the conditions necessary to carry out its service well may always be guaranteed."
"We need transcendence."
Then the Holy Father Francis continued one of the main themes of his first speech in Greece: the gaze towards transcendence and towards others. "From here [Greece], the horizons of humanity have expanded. I too feel invited to raise my gaze and to stop at the highest part of the city: the Acropolis. Visible from afar to travelers who have reached it over the millennia, it offered an indispensable reference to divinity. It is the call to expand the horizons upwards, from Mount Olympus to the Acropolis and Mount Athos. Greece invites man of all times to direct the journey of life towards the highest: towards God, because we need transcendence to be truly human," the Pontiff said.
"And while today in the West, which was born here, there is a tendency to obfuscate the need for Heaven," he added, "trapped by the frenzy of thousands of earthly careers and by the insatiable greed of a consumerism that depersonalizes, these places invite us to let ourselves be surprised by the infinite, by the beauty of being, by the joy of faith."
"Through here have passed the paths of the Gospel that have united East and West, the Holy Places and Europe, Jerusalem and Rome; those Gospels that, in order to bring to the world the good news of God the lover of man, were written in Greek, the immortal language used by the Word - the Logos - to express itself, the language of human wisdom turned into the voice of divine Wisdom," he added.
"Rollback of democracy"
But in this city, Francis pointed out, "the gaze, in addition to being directed upwards, is also directed towards the other. We are reminded of the sea, to which Athens looks out and which orients the vocation of this land, located in the heart of the Mediterranean, to be a bridge between people".
"Here democracy was born," the Pope recalled, with an appeal to history: "Here great historians were passionate about narrating the histories of peoples near and far. Here, according to the well-known affirmation of Socrates, the feeling of being citizens not only of one's own country, but of the whole world, began. Citizens, here man became aware of being "a political animal" (Aristotle, Politics, I, 2) and, as part of a community, he saw in others not only subjects, but citizens with whom to organize the polis together. This is where democracy was born. The cradle, millennia later, became a house, a great house of democratic peoples: I am referring to the European Union and the dream of peace and fraternity that it represents for so many peoples".
And yet, Francis stressed, looking at the world, "one cannot fail to note with concern how today, not only on the European continent, there is a decline in democracy. Democracy requires the participation and involvement of all and therefore demands effort and patience; democracy is complex, while authoritarianism is expeditious and the easy promises proposed by populism are appealing. In many societies, preoccupied with security and anesthetized by consumerism, weariness and unease lead to a kind of "democratic skepticism".
"The good policy"
However, the Pontiff recalled, "the participation of all is a fundamental requirement, not only to achieve common goals, but also because it responds to what we are: social beings, unrepeatable and at the same time interdependent". "There is a skepticism in relation to democracy", which he considered "caused by the distance of the institutions, by the fear of the loss of identity and by bureaucracy. The remedy to this does not lie in the obsessive search for popularity, in the thirst for visibility, in the proclamation of impossible promises or in the adherence to abstract ideological colonizations, but in good politics".
"Attending to the weakest"
"Because politics is a good thing and must be so in practice, as the supreme responsibility of the citizen, as the art of the common good," the Pope added, but he set a condition, a key requirement: "For the good to be truly shared, particular, I would say priority, attention must be given to the weakest strata. This is the direction to follow, which a founding father of Europe [A. De Gasperi] indicated as an antidote to the polarizations that animate democracy but threaten to exasperate it: 'There is much talk of who is on the left or on the right, but what is decisive is to move forward, and moving forward means moving toward social justice.
"In this regard, a change of pace is needed, while every day fears are spread, amplified by virtual communication, and theories are developed to oppose others. Let us help one another, instead, to move from partisanship to participation; from mere commitment to support one's own faction to active involvement for the promotion of all," the Holy Father appealed.
"From partisanship to participation". With these words the Pope charted the course to follow. "It is the motivation that should drive us on various fronts: I am thinking of the climate, the pandemic, the common market and above all widespread poverty. These are challenges that call for concrete and active collaboration; the international community needs it, to open paths to peace through a multilateralism that is not stifled by excessive nationalistic pretensions; politics needs it, to put common demands before private interests." In this sense, Francis renewed his "appreciation for the difficult journey that has led to the 'Prespa Agreement', signed between this Republic and that of North Macedonia".
Although the Pope will go this Sunday to Mytilene-Lesbos to meet with refugees, as he did five years ago, in this speech he also made a reference to the issue of migration: "I would like to exhort once again for an overall, communitarian vision of the migration issue, and encourage that attention be directed to those most in need so that, according to the possibilities of each country, they may be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated with full respect for their human rights and dignity".
The Hippocratic Oath, current
One of the issues addressed by the Pope to the Hellenic authorities was the right to life. He did so in the following terms: "Some words of Hippocrates' oath seem written for our time, such as the effort to 'regulate the tenor of life for the good of the sick', to 'abstain from all harm and offense' to others, to safeguard life at all times, particularly in the womb (Hippocratic Oath, ancient text). The right to care and treatment for all must always be privileged, so that the weakest, especially the elderly, are never discarded. Indeed, life is a right; death is not; it is welcomed, not provided.
In his conclusion, Francis referred to Athens as "the cradle of civilization", from which "a message has risen - and may it always continue to rise - a message oriented towards the highest and towards the other; which responds to the seductions of authoritarianism with democracy; which opposes individualistic indifference with care for the other, for the poor and for creation, essential pillars for a renewed humanism, which is what our times and our Europe need. O Theós na evloghí tin Elládha! [God bless Greece!"
