Excerpt:
After more than three weeks of debate, the EU has managed to produce a text that explicitly mentions Christians as victims of persecution and the object of violent attacks. An earlier text had been prepared in January, after the terrorist attack on the Church in Baghdad and the massacre at the Church in Alexandria, but was it rejected because of the lack of references to Christians, since the EU preferred to use generic term "religious minorities".
The new text approved yesterday explicitly mentions "Christians and their places of worship" victims of "acts of religious intolerance and discrimination," but now hastens to include among the victims of such acts "Muslim pilgrims and other religious communities" as well .
The Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, one of the promoters of the text, had condemned the draft as a sign of 'excessive secularism "present in the EU, but expressed satisfaction with the text adopted yesterday. Moreover, recalling that the European Constitution does not mention the Christian roots among the historic foundations of Europe, yesterday's statement really is a gigantic departure.