“Making sure the institutions that represent religions and a systematic, structured dialogue with them are recognised even in the political arena, not just the national one but the European one as well. It is a guarantee of future for the civil institutions as well as for the human community as a whole”. This was said by mgr. Mariano Crociata, president of Comece, the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, as he spoke in Santiago de Compostela this morning at the XXV Annual Interculture Dialogue with Churches and Religious Institutions, organised by the European People’s Party group (EPP). “Phenomena such as fundamentalism and radicalisation – mgr. Crociata pointed out – are rightly felt as a call to try to prevent coexistence and encounter turning into divergence or open hostility from someone. In this sense, it is essential to reassert that the way to a peaceful coexistence of religious traditions is not by removing or even just leaving religion out of the public sphere, it is by enhancing religion through the protection and promotion of the principle of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. That’s why intercultural and interreligious dialogue must be encouraged to build a fairer, more supportive society”. This is how the Bishop replies to those who believe that “society and the road to progress would move on more smoothly if one could get rid of religions”. “Religions – he said –, when they genuinely talk with each other in a democratic society, play a further, important role. They actually remind us that without wider resources, ideals and horizons than the merely material ones no human society can ever exist”.