The Church has already been speaking on these (social) issues for decades. We do not need ever-new documents on the matter. What we care about is the salvation of souls. The Gospel contains all the answers within itself. At the end of the day, things are simple. An excess of words and complexity is not an indication of a divine solution. Our solution is Jesus. That is what we must offer to the world, nothing else. It is that simple.
Marian Eleganti, Bishop Emeritus of Chur, Switzerland, responds to the dilemmas of today’s Europe, with unconventional reflections on illegal immigration, Islamization, and the materialism of the EU. And the role of the Church.
“Personally, I am convinced that Islam is not integrable into our political systems shaped by Christianity. There is no apolitical Islam, of pure religious interiority. It is a system of dominance. And the more convinced its followers are of it, the less integrable it is. The result is parallel worlds,” says Swiss Bishop Marian Eleganti.
He is not a bishop who seeks consensus. A Benedictine, former Abbot of St. Otmarsberg and Auxiliary Bishop of Chur until 2021, he has become one of the most uncomfortable voices in European Catholicism. A man of spiritual and intellectual rigor, for years he has defended the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith in an increasingly hostile and lost West. He paid the price of fidelity to conscience: in 2018 he resigned as bishop for youth of the Swiss Bishops' Conference due to fundamental disagreements during the Synod on Youth; and in 2021 he submitted his resignation at just 65 years old, ten years before the mandatory retirement age limit. He did not seek refuge in silence. Since last July 12, he is also among the founders of the lay association *Pro Fide Ecclesiae*, established to “defend the Faith from heretical interpretations and falsifications,” to counter the attempts of the German Synodal Way to alter Catholic doctrine. Today he is one of the most lucid figures regarding one of the crises going through Europe: the migratory crisis.
**Europe is overwhelmed by yet another migratory crisis. What role should the Catholic Church take in the face of these radical demographic, religious, and social changes?**
The Catholic Church should not adopt an idealistic approach to this issue. By this, I mean that it should not preach a moralism detached from reality, which ignores the concretely existing social problems linked to unlimited immigration that can only be solved with political common sense. The ecclesial project of *universal brotherhood* does not combine truth and love.
**Why, for a decade now, has a part of the Church used the Scriptures to exalt immigration, absolve illegal status, and even erase the right to remain in one’s own land?**
Because it pays too much attention to the world. Under the pontificate of Pope Francis, this alliance with the political world has been taken to the extreme. Globalism has already failed today with respect to people's needs. It serves only the financial elite—that is, that small percentage of elitist circles that control universal monetary flows and possess unimaginable wealth. They are the ones who determine policy.
**What should be done then?**
The Church should defend the diversity of nations, languages, and cultures that God created and that give a true sense of belonging to people—those whom globalism wants to make stateless. Daily problems can be solved according to the principle of subsidiarity, rather than in distant headquarters that make their decisions in an opaque manner and behave in an increasingly totalitarian way, as in the case of the EU.
**Pew Research Center predicts that by 2050, Muslims in Europe will number 57.9 million, 11.2% of the population. In Italy, they will go from 2.87 to 7 million, from 4.8% to 12.4%. Various projections show a constant growth of the Muslim population and a decrease in the European population. What do you think about this?**
Unfortunately, we have too few children of our own. We compensate for them with immigrants in order to survive as a society. Most people probably think: “Everything will be fine!”
**And how does the Church position itself before upheavals of such magnitude?**
It does not want to see things for what they are and speaks only of charity, against which there is nothing to object. But this does not solve the problem. A father who wants to help orphan children and already has two of his own must assess whether he can afford to adopt another child. His love for his neighbor manifests itself in a reasonable way. He evaluates whether the child is integrable into the existing family, both from a human-psychological and a financial point of view. One adoption too many could weigh heavily on the family and perhaps even put it at risk. One cannot adopt whom one cannot support. Any child understands this.
**Cardinal Sarah denounced “a virulent atheism that permeates everything, even ecclesiastical speeches, which consists in allowing radically pagan and worldly thoughts and lifestyles to coexist with the faith.” Can we react?**
The Church must address young people, who will constitute the Christian or non-Christian families of tomorrow. Young people need role models; a single young priest, with an almost holy appearance, exerts an enormous force of attraction on them. We need holiness. It moves and attracts. It can be encountered continuously in the Church. And where it is lived, good fruits are not long in coming. And one more thing...
**What?**
We need answers—well-founded, reasonable answers to the questions that worry people. Teresa of Ávila preferred education over devotion in her confessors.
**From high-profile attacks to thwarted plots, down to minor incidents: the common thread is always the same—hatred for the West, Christianity, Jews. Are we reaching a point of no return?**
The danger is very grave. The phenomena described make the masks fall off. Hatred and arrogance, thirst for power and violence—in other words: submission—are clearly demonic phenomena. If a religion endorses them, it disqualifies itself. In the words of Jesus, the blindness will reach such a point that it will be perpetrated in the name of God. If we do not intervene now to counter this trend, then the point of no return will be reached, at least in some regions of the Western world. Unrests such as those occurring in England are its portents.
**Islamically inspired parties push to graft sharia into European legislation. But the opposing front is no less hostile: European liberal institutions look at the Social Doctrine of the Church with the same impatience. Squeezed between two modernities, does the Church still have the time and strength to choose a third way?**
We must evaluate both things separately: Islam and neo-Enlightenment modernism. What they have in common is an anti-Christian spearhead. We must pray and place our trust in God. Ultimately, it is a matter of something supernatural: on the one hand, the Incarnation of God and the revelation of truth; on the other, the continuous and ever-new Luciferian inventions that seduce men. The latter aim for an earthly and political kingdom. God, on the other hand, wants to reign in hearts.
**Migration, ecology, dialogue, poverty: the “horizontal” agenda that was supposed to make the Church popular has instead emptied its seminaries and pews. What is your analysis of the state of the European Church?**
Unfortunately, Pope Francis has pushed the Church with great force in this direction. Jesus clearly says: “My kingdom is not of this world.” So the Church should not constantly speak as if the kingdom of God were of this world. Our task is not the same as that of politicians.
**And what is it?**
https://lanuovabq.it/it/la-chiesa-stretta-fra-materialismo-e-islam-parla-mons-eleganti