In an exclusive interview with The European Conservative in March 2026, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller delivered a particularly grave assessment of the demographic and migratory upheavals sweeping Western societies. Speaking from his apartments, receiving the journalist before his vast library, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called on the citizens and political leaders of Europe to grasp the measure of their responsibilities in the face of the risk of marginalization in their own lands.
Speaking with the moderation and intellectual precision characteristic of this Rhenish prelate, who held one of the most important offices in the Church under the pontificates of Benedict XVI and Francis, the cardinal did not evade the question of assimilation. In his view, large-scale integration proves impossible if a vast majority of newcomers do not convert to Christianity. He warns of the potential arrival of millions of Muslim migrants over the next decade, fearing that this total cultural change could ultimately provoke internal conflicts, akin to the tensions observed in certain regions of the world.
To illustrate the inherent difficulties of this cohabitation, the high prelate highlights the concerning situation of Christian minorities, who suffer oppression in almost all Muslim-majority countries. On this subject, he recounts having questioned an artificial intelligence tool: while the machine initially asserts that Islam is tolerant, it proved incapable of naming a single Muslim-majority country where Christians enjoy true equality of rights.
Faced with the complexity of this public debate, Cardinal Müller seeks to clarify the limits of papal authority, to avoid any doctrinal confusion among the faithful as well as outside observers. He laments what he identifies as a cult of personality around Pope Francis and an exaggerated ultramontanism, which would seek to transform every private opinion of the pontiff into dogma. While the Holy Father has a moral duty to defend the fundamental human rights of every person, papal infallibility operates within an extremely strict and rare canonical framework. It in no way covers, he specifies, the Pope's personal opinion on migration policies.
This vulnerability of Western nations is accompanied, according to the former prefect, by an alarming rise in anti-Christian violence. He bases this on the observation of an exponential increase in attacks against religious buildings and Christian values, documented by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, an institution which formally appealed to the European Parliament in 2025 in the face of public inaction.
However, the cardinal does not absolve the West of its own deviations. He establishes a direct link between the massive recourse to immigration and the crisis of the birth rate, which he calls a man-made catastrophe. Recalling the policies hostile to family and marriage promoted during his youth, he compares these state-imposed hindrances to the foolish one-child policy once imposed by China. The prelate reminds us that welcoming life within marriage is a natural inclination, and that withdrawing from it goes against nature and grace. When states interfere with natural law to instrumentalize human life for the benefit of the powerful, they step outside their legitimate role, which should be limited to serving the common good and infrastructure.
In the face of contemporary individualism, Cardinal Müller argues for a theological rehabilitation of the nation. While he unreservedly condemns the historical deviations of imperialism, colonialism, and exacerbated nationalism, which he judges absolutely anti-Christian, he defends the nation as a healthy structure, comparable to an extended family. Born in the West after the fall of the Roman Empire and made fruitful by the Christian faith, nations allow persons—who are never isolated individuals—to share a language, schools, a culture, and founding narratives.
It is therefore natural to assume a cultural or ethnic heritage, and to recognize oneself as typically English or German, without erecting this identity into an absolute. The cardinal roots this vision in the mystery of the Incarnation, recalling that Christ became flesh in a specific human context. Consequently, every nation possesses the right to perpetuate its own culture. This loyalty to one's people fits, according to him, within the continuity of the fourth commandment, through which the Church has always taught the duty to honor not only one's parents, but also one's ancestors and homeland.
Rejecting globalist ideologies that erase carnal belonging, the German cardinal concludes his analysis by recalling the very nature of the Catholic Church, whose universality does not abolish the diversity of peoples. Humanity certainly forms one family, but it is articulated around distinct homes, like the European family. The Church is universal, he summarizes, but it remains a universal Church in the Father's house, where there are different dwelling places for each.