By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A senior Vatican official is warning that unless European Christians begin to live according to their beliefs, the entire continent of Europe will be overrun by Muslims.
The Telegraph is reporting that Father Piero Gheddo of the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions blamed the low birth rate among indigenous Europeans combined with an unprecedented wave of Muslim immigrants as the reason why Europe could be dominated by Islam in a few generations.
“The challenge must be taken seriously,” he said. “Certainly from a demographic point of view, as it is clear to everyone that Italians are decreasing by 120,000 or 130,000 persons a year because of abortion and broken families – while among the more than 200,000 legal immigrants a year in Italy, more than half are Muslims and Muslim families, which have a much higher level of growth.”
He predicted that Islam would “sooner rather than later” conquer the majority in Europe.
“The fact is that, as a people, we are becoming ever more pagan and the religious vacuum is inevitably filled by other proposals and religious forces,” he said.
“If we consider ourselves a Christian country, we should return to the practice of Christian life, which would also solve the problem of empty cradles,” he added.
Father Gheddo’s comments only echo others made by high-ranking European prelates in the past few months.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the retired Archbishop of Prague, warned that Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void “created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
Like Father Gheddo, he called on Christians to wake up to these threats and start to practice their faith more fervently.
The Telegraph reports that just last year Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, warned Catholic women against marrying Muslims, and Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi recently urged the Italian government to give priority to Catholic migrants over Muslims in order to protect his country’s religious identity.
Oddly enough, much of this transformation is taking place “under the radar” of many Europeans because the press routinely ignores the situation, along with most news of interest to Christians.
According to the Telegraph, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, recently confronted this situation by accusing the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of providing news coverage that is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.
“Our detailed research into BBC news coverage of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, together with a systematic analysis of output by the Catholic church, has revealed a consistent anti-Christian institutional bias,” the Cardinal said.
He cited as evidence of this bias the BBC’s plan to air a negative documentary about the Pope on the eve of his upcoming visit to England.
A spokesman for the BBC denied the existence of any bias, insisting that their commitment to religious broadcasting is “unequivocal” and said it plans extensive news coverage of the Pope’s visit scheduled for September 16-19.
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