Two thousand years of evangelization. The great evangelizing cycles' is the degree scroll under which the XXI International Symposium on Theology was held at the University of Navarra. In the presentation, the president of the organizing committee , Professor Enrique de la Lama, referred to the forgiveness recently requested by John Paul II.

"This great action of the Pope has much to do with his mystical interiority and his peculiar conception of history, which he holds up as a mirror of justice in which to look at himself. He has order forgiveness for the great injustices and inconsiderations committed against God and against men by the sons of the Church", he said.

The professor of the University of Navarra clarified that "it is not up to the magisterium of the Church to determine what history has been. That is a matter for specialists. It is not for the Church to determine whether, for example, there was genocide on the island of Puerto Rico or not. However, the Church maintains, according to the professor, that "if there was, we must mourn for it. The Holy Father grieves for all the injustices there have been, and even more so if the perpetrators have been Christians, as on occasions has happened and will happen, given the human condition".

He also pointed out that "history has not arisen to put everyone in their place, it is not a settling of scores. Moreover, the Pope does not have the role of mission statement to correct historical errors. In history, some people, ecclesiastics and laity, have been treated unjustly for a long time, and I fear that this will continue to happen for a long time". De la Lama recognized that "the Church has taken some time to recover the image of personalities unjustly attacked, because the historians themselves have not tried to do so".

A Church without Alzheimer's

This International Symposium of the University of Navarra aims to outline the main evangelizing events of the Church at a special time: "The Church of the year 2000 is aware of itself and of its history. If the Church were not historically aware, it would run the risk of diminishing its identity and would incur in a superficiality rather than a superficiality B. The past must be known even if there are people who are scandalized that the history of the Church has been the way it has been". Enrique de la Lama compared forgetting history "to a person suffering from Alzheimer's, who may end up not knowing who he is and losing all responsibility".

The Symposium was attended by more than 200 participants from Canada, Argentina, Chile, Poland, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Russia, India, Lebanon, Taiwan and the Philippines. The experts analyzed ten crucial moments of evangelization from the 1st century to the present. Thus, topics such as "the Inquisition, the purification of the historical report , the rehabilitation of personalities unjustly vilified or the finding of others little known in our Hispanic habitat" were discussed.

The keynote speakers were, among others: Lutheran pastor Hans Jürgen Prien, who was a missionary in America and is now Full Professor in Cologne (Germany); Professor Bruno Neveu, an analyst of Church history through the prosecution of historical errors; Professor Luca Codignola, a specialist in the unknown evangelization of North America.