German bishop's call for community.

Asession entitled `Europe at the crossroads' set out to identify a specific role for the people of Europe in the next century.

The Catholic Bishop of Trier, Germany, Dr Hermann Josef Spital, emphasized the importance of Europe's spiritual roots. Spital, who is President of Pax Christi in Germany and a leading advocate of dialogue with other churches and faiths, highlighted relationships, dialogue and building community life as the keys to Europe's future.

Humanity is made for relationships; we are dependent on each other, said the Bishop. `To live as a human being is to live with other human beings. The opposite to constraint is not liberty, but relationships--or the freedom to relate. Freedom should lead to solidarity; it is the threshold not the room.'

Russian thinker and essayist Professor Grigori Pomerants said that European culture had over-emphasized differences and logic at the expense of spirituality and wholeness. There was `an imbalance between Athens and Jerusalem. Anything which is truly of God must contain within it the spirit of the whole.'

He added, `Learning from others need not mean losing our own faith and forms of worship. But fear of dialogue betrays a lack of faith in our own belief and system.' He called for a `super-ecumenicism' between the monotheistic religions and those of the East.