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"Europe is a cultural and not a geographical continent. It is united by its culture which gives it a common identity. The roots which formed ... this continent are those of Christianity."
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Josef Ratzinger, prior to his election as Pope Benedict XIV. Interview with the magazine of French newspaper Le Figaro, August 2004, putting the case for the exclusion of Turkey on religious grounds.
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"We won't succeed with Europe solely on the basis of legal expertise or economic know-how. If in the next ten years we haven't managed to give a soul to Europe, to give it spirituality and meaning, the game will be up."
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Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission 1990-95. Speech to European church leaders, February 1993.
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"Turkey [is] an Asiatic nation, its capital is not in Europe, 95% of its population are outside Europe. Turkey has a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life. Letting it in would be the end of the European Union."
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Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, French President 1974-1981, President of Commission for drafting the EU Constitution set up in 2002. Widely taken to mean he doesn't want Turkey to join because it is a majority Muslim country.
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"After all the bloodshed of two world wars, Europe is above all a state of mind ...
But Europe could miss its hour. That would mean that unification, far from being a step into a life of freedom, would rather be a sinking into a state of shared slavery."
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Father Romano Guardini, German Catholic Theologian (1885-1968) who was the inspiration for many leading Europhiles including especially Jacques Delors. Erasmus Prize acceptance speech, Brussels, 28 April 1962.
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"Europe's founders, like Adenauer, De Gaspari and Schuman, put their Christian [Catholic] faith at the centre of their political lives. How can we underestimate, for example, the fact that in 1951, before beginning the delicate negotiations which would lead to the adoption of the Treaty of Paris, they wished to meet in a Benedictine monastery on the Rhine for meditation and prayer?"
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Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), 7 November 2003. Audience with members of European Christian Democrat Foundation. Appealing to have Christianity mentioned in the EU Constitution.
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"[A united Europe will be] the Greatest Catholic superstate the world has ever known... the greatest single human force ever seen by man."
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Pope John XXIII (1881 - 1963). Alleged quotation, 1963 - souce unknown. His "Pacem in Terris" Encyclical certainly provided welcome support for supra-state authorities such as the UN. But then it was not yet clear just how much the UN operates against the interests of democratic nations.
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"It is wonderful that we have got back to the Introit of the new Mass of the Assumption. It's the corona stellarum duodecim (crown of 12 stars) of the Woman of the Apocalypse*"
* Revelation 12:1 "A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head"
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Leon Marchal, Former Secretary-General, Council of Europe. 11 Dec 1955 (Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary). On the unveiling of the Council of Europe stained glass window in Strasbourg Cathedral, which include the 12 allegedly Marian stars that appear on the EU flag. Various potty websites take the fact that there are twelve stars, never more nor less, as conclusive proof that the EU is an attempted reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire. I am not quite that paranoid.
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"For France, Europe is first and foremost a state of mind, a community of souls whose aim, since the Enlightenment, has been the quest for happiness and justice. Europe has put people at the heart of its political project and achieved the goal of peace."
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Jean-Pierre Raffarin, French Prime Minister since 2002. Financial Times, 15 January 2004.
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"We will be joined to a Europe in which the Catholic religion will be the dominant faith, and in which the application of the Catholic Social Doctrine will be the major factor in everyday political and economic life."
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Shirley Williams, British Labour Minister and later co-founder of Social Democrats. 1975.
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If you have an authenticated quotation on Europe, the EEC or the EU that you think should be listed here, then email me .
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