In a provocative reflection on the coronavirus and Europe, Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said aloud what many at this moment are likely thinking: With the European Union in disarray over the migration crisis and weakened by the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, could the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic be the tipping point signalling the end is near?

Speaking of the global impact the coronavirus is having and the need for solidarity with those who will and are suffering in the economic fallout, Hollerich, who was given a red hat by Pope Francis in 2019, said “The largest solidarity network we can imagine is the European Union. Yet the EU seems paralyzed.”

President of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), Hollerich spoke in an article to be published in Saturday’s print edition of the Jesuit-run journal La CiviltaCattolica, but which is already available on their Italian-language website.

In Europe, “the return to national interests seems obvious to most member countries,” he said; then, turning to the current back and forth over aid packages for EU member states most heavily impacted by COVID-19, he said that so far, “The crisis seems to favour the individualism of nations.”

Noting how past epidemics have left lasting impressions on European life and culture, Hollerich mused aloud as to what will be “the traces of the coronavirus pandemic in the collective memory of the European peoples.”

“Europe cannot be built without an idea of Europe, without ideals,” he said, and pointed to increasingly strict migration policies in many European nations, as well as prominent images of overcrowded refugee camps and capsized boats in the Mediterranean. These incidents, he said, “have inflicted deep wounds on the European ideal.” When it comes to the coronavirus, he said a lack of solidarity with heavily hit countries “can become the fatal wound,” he said. “We see in evidence the difficulty of European solidarity … I fear that for many this will be the disenchantment with the European project.”

Hollerich’s concerns, and those of the pope, were echoed by Italian economist Stefano Zamagni, who in an April 14 roundtable with journalists challenged the current EU model in moments of crisis.