The Sant Jordi workshop

On Wednesday, one of the events suspended on April 23 due to the death of Pope Francis was held at the Palau de la Generalitat. The event, a lecture by essayist Ferran Sáez Mateu entitled "Christianity in Catalan Culture. Spirituality Today," responded, in line with the new approach to the official Sant Jordi agenda promoted by Salvador Illa, to the half-declared desire to turn the book and rose festival into a day of reflection on a sense of inclusive national identity based on the vindication of the Christian roots of Catalonia and Europe. This desire has also been expressed in the reinstatement, within the institutional program, of Mass in the Chapel of Saint George, with the corresponding blessing of the roses, and the participation of the president in a dialogue with the writer Javier Cercas aimed at promoting a mental framework favorable to the acceptance of the moral leadership of the papacy "beyond religious beliefs."

Since his inauguration, the president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) has combined references to Christian humanism as a source of inspiration for his government with the vindication of Catalonia's Christian roots, combining his sense of personal identity with the promotion of an ideological narrative about collective identity and with a peculiar interpretation of the secular nature of institutions that gives great prominence to the Catholic Church. The harmony of this operation with a change of era in which the discourse linking liberal secularism with the decadence of the West is successfully promoted, and in which the cultivation of diverse sentiments fuels the statistical weight of those who identify as culturally Christian without being believers seems obvious.

As Illa has repeated, the role of Christianity in history is of undeniable importance.

As Illa himself has repeatedly stated, the role of Christianity in history is undeniably important. But the shift from the need to know and understand this past to affirming "Christian roots" as an identity heritage that must be embraced communally and identified with values ​​that find their most authoritative custodian in the Church is questionable.

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In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus points out that plants are known by their fruits and that grapes cannot be picked from brambles nor figs from thistles. Illa prefers to resort to another botanical metaphor and speak of trees that die if they are separated from their roots, as if the real history of the Church itself were irrelevant and as if the equivalence between historical "roots" and contemporary "values" that he raises were not a dubious matter. The use of this metaphor by writers, popes, and politicians has a long history. Sante Lesti recently recounted it in a book, Il mito delle radici cristiane dell'Europa. Dalla Rivoluzione francese ai giorni nostri (The Myth of Christian Roots of Europe. From the French Revolution in Our Days) (Einaudi, 2024), where he recounts the main versions of these stories and their strategies.