The Cabinet "minister without portfolio" and co-chair of the ruling Conservative Party made her remarks in an article published by the London-based Daily Telegraph Feb. 14, the first day of a two-day Vatican visit by the delegation of seven government ministers. They were to be joined by Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster before they meet the Pope and Vatican officials to discuss a range of policy issues.
The trip was more than "a Valentine's Day 'love-in' with our Catholic neighbors," said Baroness Warsi. "This is about recognizing the deep and intrinsic role of faith here in Britain and overseas."
She said that in her Feb. 14 address to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which she said she wanted to "ring out beyond the Vatican walls," she would be arguing that "to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds."
"In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages," said Baroness Warsi.
"I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity," she said. "The point is this: The societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.
"These values shine through our politics, our public life, our culture, our economics, our language and our architecture," she said. "You cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes."
The baroness said she feared "that a militant secularization is taking hold of our societies. We see it in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won't fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalized and downgraded in the public sphere.
"It seems astonishing to me that those who wrote the European Constitution made no mention of God or Christianity," she said.
The baroness, the first Muslim female to hold a Cabinet post in a British government, said one of the "most worrying aspects about this militant secularization is that, at its core and in its instincts, it is deeply intolerant."
She said that in her Feb. 15 audience with Pope Benedict XVI, she would give him her "absolute commitment to continue fighting for faith in today's society."
She stressed that she was "not calling for some kind of 21st-century theocracy" but "for a more open confidence in faith, where faith has a place at the table, though not an exclusive position."
In excerpts of her Feb. 14 address reported in the British media, Baroness Warsi said the Pope was right to highlight the increasing marginalization of religion during his September 2010 address in London's Westminster Hall.
"I see it in United Kingdom and I see it in Europe," said the published excerpts. "Spirituality, suppressed. Divinity, downgraded.
"Where, in the words of the archbishop of Canterbury, faith is looked down on as the hobby of 'oddities, foreigners and minorities.' Where religion is dismissed as an eccentricity because it's infused with tradition," she said. "Where we undermine people who attribute good works to their belief and require them to deny it as their motivation."
She said response to militant secularization "has to be simple: holding firm in our faiths, holding back intolerance, reaffirming the religious foundations on which our societies are built and reasserting the fact that, for centuries, Christianity in Europe has been inspiring, motivating, strengthening and improving our societies."