astana 4

Loup Besmond de Senneville, LA CROIX

"Your Holiness, thank you very much for this these days in Central Asia. During this trip, there was a lot of talk about values and ethics, particularly during the Interfaith Congress, and some religious leaders evoked the loss of the West because of its moral degradation. What is your opinion on this? Do you consider that the West is in a state of perdition, threatened by the loss of its values? I am thinking in particular of the debate that there is about euthanasia, about the end of life, a debate that there has been going on in Italy, but also in France and Belgium.”

It is true that the West, in general... 

is not at the highest level of exemplarity right now. 

It is not a child at its first communion, at all. The West has taken wrong paths. We think for example of the social injustice that is among us. There are some countries that have developed a little further on social justice, but I think of my continent, Latin America, which is West. We also think of the Mediterranean, which is West: today it is the biggest graveyard, not of Europe, but of humanity.

What has the West lost in forgetting to welcome, when it needs people? When you think about the demographic winter that we have: it needs people: both in Spain – in Spain especially – even in Italy, there are empty villages, only twenty old ladies there, and nothing else.

But why not make a policy of the West where immigrants are included with the principle that the migrant should be welcomed, accompanied, promoted, and integrated? That is very important, to integrate. But instead: "no", and you leave things empty. 

It is a lack in understanding values... 

when the West has experienced this, we are countries that háve migrated.

In my country – which I think is 49 million right now – we only have a little less than a million indigenous people, and everybody else is of migrant roots. Everybody: Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Polish Slavs, from Asia Minor, Lebanese, everybody... It's mixed blood there, and this experience has helped us so much.

Then, for political reasons, it's not going well in Latin American countries. But migration, I think, at this time should be taken seriously, because it raises the intellectual and congenial [qua sympathie] value of the West a little bit.

On the contrary, with this demographic winter, where are we going? The West is decaying on this point, it expires a little bit, it has lost... 

Let's think about the economic aspect... 

Much good is done, but let's think about the political and mystical spirit of Schuman, Adenauer, De Gasperi, those great men... where are they, today? There are great ones, but they can't take society forward. The West needs to talk, to respect each other... 

And then there is the danger of populism. What happens in such a socio-political state? Messiahs are born: the messiahs of populisms. We are seeing how populisms are born. I think a few times I mentioned that book by Ginzberg, Sindrome 1933... He says just how a populism is born in Germany after the fall of the Weimar government. That's how populisms are born: when there is a half level without strength, and one promises a messiah.

I think we Westerners are not at the highest level to help other peoples. Are we a little decadent? Maybe, yes. But we have to take back the values, the values of Europe, the values of the founding fathers who founded the European Union, the great ones. 

I don't know, it’s a little bit confused... 

but I think I answered that.

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Loup Besmond de Senneville:

“What about euthanasia?”

Killing is not human, period. 

If you kill with motivation, eventually you will kill more and more. 

Let's leave killing to the beasts.

[bron]