What has happened to “the
Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom; to the old continent, “the home of poets,
philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters; to “the mother of peoples and nations, the
mother of great men and women who upheld, and even sacrificed their lives for,
the dignity of their brothers and sisters? This was the three part question
opening the Holy Fathers extensive address with which, on Friday morning, 6
May, in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace,
he accepted the Charlemagne Prize conferred on him by the German city of Aquisgrana.
The Popes address
