In a speech before the European Parliament, Cardinal Robert Sarah warned that the rise of radical Islam and the push of gender ideology are “apocalyptic beasts” and an attack on the sanctity of life and God.
The event, “Europe and Africa. In conversation with Cardinal Robert Sarah,” was presented as “an opportunity for reflection and dialogue on the relationship between Europe and Africa, with particular attention to Christianity, culture, human dignity, and the future of our societies.”
During his speech, Cardinal Sarah noted, “The crisis of the Church in the West and the crisis of the West itself are, at heart, one and the same crisis.”
“It is because the Church in many European nations has lost its identity, its prophetic voice, that the West itself has lost the meaning of its own civilization.”
While decrying the fact that the U.N., as well as European and other Western powers, have sought to impose gender ideology on African nations in exchange for financial aid, Sarah echoed remarks that he made during the 2015 Synod on the Family that gender ideology, as well as Islamic fundamentalism, are “apocalyptic beasts.”
“In 2015, during the Synod on the Family, I said, and I do not take back a single word today, that ‘gender ideology and Islamic fundamentalism each represent, in their own way, two apocalyptic beasts that threaten to destroy not only the family, but humanity itself, the image of God,’” he said.
“Some considered this image excessive. I continue to believe that it contains some truth. Could it be that these forces, though very different in origin and form, share the pretense of rewriting humanity to their own liking?” he added. “One in the name of so-called progress, the other in the name of a so-called return to an original purity, denying in either case that religious freedom and that human dignity.”
He continued, noting, ““When Europe constructs ‘rights’ detached from the truth about the human person – abortion, which some would like to elevate to a ‘fundamental right,’ ‘sexual identity’ reduced to pure subjective self-construction – reason itself is distorted from being an instrument for knowing the truth it becomes an instrument of power capable of imposing itself through the force of law and money on those who do not share those promises.”
Watch (begins at 23:19):
Cardinal Sarah is from West Africa’s Guinea and was considered a potential successor to Pope Francis.
He has been an outspoken advocate for the West to hold on to its identity and principles and has described mass migration as ‘self-destruction’ for Europe, a ‘new form of slavery,’ arguing it is better to help people flourish in their homelands rather than encouraging them to abandon their native countries.
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