At European Parliament, Pope Bluntly Critiques a Continent’s Malaise

By ANDREW HIGGINS

November 25, 2014 | http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/world/europe/pope-francis-strasbourg-european-parliament.html?referrer=

STRASBOURG, France — The last pope to address the European Parliament, John Paul II, rejoiced at what he described as a “special moment in the history of this continent” in October 1988, as Communism was crumbling and Europe was drawing closer together.
On Tuesday, after a break of more than a quarter-century, another pope, Francis, returned here to the same setting, but with a grimly somber diagnosis.
Europe, he declared, has lost its way, its energies sapped by economic crisis and a remote, technocratic bureaucracy. It is increasingly a bystander in a world that has become “less and less Eurocentric,” and that frequently looks at the Continent “with aloofness, mistrust and even, at times, suspicion.”
Gently delivered, it was nevertheless a failing grade.