Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah issued a stark warning about Europe’s moral and spiritual decline. “Enshrining abortion in the Constitution is a direct affront to God,” he stated, emphasizing that the ideological persecution of faith in the West is now more dangerous than the physical violence endured by Christians in Africa and Asia.
Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship, denounced Europe, once the cradle of Christianity, as having become the epicenter of a cultural war against faith and traditional values.
“Ideological persecution in the West is more insidious, more destructive, because it does not kill the body but the soul of nations,” he underscored.
The cardinal specifically addressed the case of France, where the government and much of the parliament are pushing to include abortion as a constitutional right.
“Turning the murder of the innocent into fundamental law is blasphemous. It is a mockery of God and natural law,” he declared, recalling that the Second Vatican Council described abortion as “an abominable crime,” a stance that, in his words, “the Church can never change.”
The African prelate, known for his steadfast defense of moral order and traditional liturgy, also condemned the growing marginalization of Christianity in the Western public sphere.
In his view, militant secularism has replaced faith with an ideology that idolizes moral relativism and absolute individual autonomy.
“Europe is tearing out its Christian roots and, in doing so, destroying its identity,” he affirmed.
Meanwhile, he noted, millions of Christians in Africa and Asia live under the threat of death, discrimination, or displacement.
According to the 2025 report by Open Doors, over 380 million Christians face persecution or severe restrictions on their religious freedom.
In countries like Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Christian communities are attacked by jihadist groups, while in Asia, authoritarian governments intensify repression.
Yet Sarah considers “Europe’s moral indifference and public apostasy” an even greater threat to the faith.For the cardinal, the issue lies not only in laws but in the mindset driving them.
“When a society declares that human life can be legally eliminated, that society has broken its covenant with God,” he warned.
In his analysis, abortion, euthanasia, and the dissolution of the family concept are symptoms of a deeper spiritual crisis: the replacement of objective good with personal desire.
Sarah called on European Catholics not to yield to ideological pressure and to defend the truth of the Gospel in the public square.
“The silence of believers is complicity. We must speak with courage, for the world needs to hear God’s voice again,” he urged.
The cardinal’s warning is not only theological but also political. Europe, he said, is becoming a laboratory for moral engineering driven by a left that has made abortion, gender ideology, and secularization its new dogmas.
“When the left legislates against life and against God, it destroys the foundations of Western civilization,” he concluded.
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