Rome (Italy), November 1^st (VID) - In the process of the renewal sparked by Vatican II, we religious have had a place of importance. We have not always been understood. Some of our initiatives have seemed strange, disquieting. The new image that we project is judged by some as desertion and infidelity to permanent values that the religious life should defend and manifest. Whoever knows the religious life closely and the people involved, should express an assessment of present and future hope, without underestimating the difficulties that surround us. We acknowledge the necessity of responding to our vocation to holiness in an absolute manner, to receive and to cultivate this gift. Holiness means not only the appeal to prayer, but also to service, a service coming forth from an intimate union with Christ. Prayer opens the mystery to us, induces us to contemplate, to adore, to give. Service renders us witnesses, martyrs, servants of the oppressed and rejected poor, prophetic denouncers of injustice and defenders of fundamental and inalienable human. All of this enters within the perspective of holiness. There seems to be less room for our form of religious life in a post-illustrated and post-modern Europe. The cultural trend is so alien to our life style and to our objectives, that some prognosticate its extinction: some for extra-ecclesiastic reasons, others for intra-ecclesiastic motives. If one says that we live in a post religious era, it is even stronger reason to say that the time for the religious is passed as well as the time for theology of religious life! There are those who perceive the decline of vocations, the tremendous vocational hemorrhage undergone in the last years, as demonstration of being bereft of ideas of the conventional theology of religious life. Will this new century bring death to the religious in Europe?  Europe without the religious would be something like a historical failure of great proportion. Religious life has and must have a place in post modern and secularized Europe. It can offer a “human reserve” and give answer to middle-class society and its suffocating products, give answer to a world living without sense and transcendence. The religious can have an innovative and prophetic role in a void society that only has a future of evolution, of virtual reality, but having no surprise nor any sense of the kingdom of God. We religious can constructively contribute to the realization of a new Europe if we are faithful to our symbolic condition; because the religious life is a powerful sign of character, being a radical symbol of following Christ and the messianic hope, a living memory of eschatology. We are in a condition to awaken a Christian soul in Europe by taking the offensive, awakening creativity, goodness, transcendence, and contemplation. Technical devices are not what Europe expects from us, but rather a symbolic role that opens horizons of the unsuspected and the forgotten. Others believe in the ecclesiastical movements in the Church, or particular Churches within the Church – diocesan churches that are well constructed and knowledgeable of their vocation and mission  - where we religious do not belong. They want to take away our formation centers, our apostolic initiatives; they see us as strange in the dioceses. Our poor, austere, and humble appearance is looked down upon. What would particular churches without religious be? It is inopportune that we make any statement, but an answer can be given when we have a historical perspective. The religious life in Europe is living a decisive moment. It must avoid any type of middle-class mediocrity, and assume its responsibility to assist Europe to emerge into a new culture. It must introduce itself sagaciously at the sources of this culture without being competitive and without renouncing its non-transferable duties that circumvent its symbolic role. Without a profound personal and community conversion, the correlative structural transformations that the future requires will serve as nothing or will be ineffective. Yet another pending renewal is the religious institution that ventures on the prophetic road to witness the truth and affirm that we live in times of the religious. Otherwise, the Spirit will cause something to take our place in constructing a new Europe.