Leo van Doesburg

 On Friday, 28 June 2013, the 2nd International Conference on Human Dignity, which this year will be held at the home of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, at the Casina Pio IV, in the serene grounds of the Vatican City State. If you are interested, you can register you can register here The title of the Conference, which is being generously supported by the ECPM and the Novae Terrae Foundation, is: “Squeezed between European and national legal orders: Is there room for Christianity?”   The conference programme you can find The conference programme you can find here   It is important to note, because of the security demands regarding the venue, all participants must register in advance. We are expecting an important attendance with politicians, NGOs, clergy and academics from all over Europe already confirmed.

As a reaction on the Green Paper of the European Commission concerning the automatic recognition of civil status documents (see the article on " Will the EU define marriage "), the European Humanist Federation did not comment to the questions asked by the Commission. Instead, the Federation is attacking the ECPM, CARE, Human Dignity Watch, the World Youth Alliance, and Salt and Light. Calling us: "efficiently organised and well financed but unrepresentative minority religious pressure groups whose aim appears to be to stifle the initiative at birth." And further: " It is our opinion that they are not representative even of most Christians in Europe. " Their reaction on the green paper you find here

(Picture: message on the remains of the Berlin Wall, East Gallery) On 20th April, Easter Monday, I left Romania again for an exciting new trip. Last time I wrote my impressions about Armenia and Georgia. This is my last destination from that trip: Warsaw! In the early morning, together with our friends from the Christian Democratic Movement of Georgia (CDM), I boarded the flight to Warsaw where I was to take part in the meeting organized by the "East European Bureau for Christian Democratic parties" from the former Soviet countries. This is an agreement between the Christian Democratic parties of Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Moldovia and Ukraine. The founders of the Christian Democratic party of Russia were observers. This meeting was organized within the conference of the European People's Party. At the airport in Vienna where we had to change planes, I saw Gevorg who just arrived from Yerevan. Unfortunately he had to wait for another plane w...

On 20th April, Easter Monday, I left Romania again for an exciting new trip. This time I was to visit Armenia in preparation for the ECPM congress; Georgia to visit the Christian Democratic Movement and to learn more about the political situation and how the ECPM could play a role to promote the Christian democratic values in this country; and to visit the meeting of the Eastern European Bureau for Christian Democracy that would take place during the Annual Congress of the European Popular Party in Warsaw. This is the first report, with impressions of the trip to Armenia. Monday evening I left Timisoara and went via Vienna to Yerevan. In the airplane I noticed that in Armenia it was three hours later in Vienna and so I arrived in the middle of the night in Yerevan but not at alltired. Accommodation was arranged by an old friend of mine, Levon Bardakjian, who offered to let me stay with his family. I arrived at his place, a nice house on a hill where I had a marvelous vie...