The twentieth century seemed to close with the end of the phenomenon that has been called secularization. If, ust to draw a superficial parallel, the nineteenth century seemed to end with the triumph of science and technology (think of the spirit of the belle époque, though overly mythologized, which already bore the signs of a spleen that burst into view in the Kulturkritik of the first decades of the twentieth century), so the twentieth century, the old millennium, seemed to end with the renewal of religion. To be sure, religions (I am thinking primarily of the great Abrahamic religions, and among them especially Christianity and Islam) are not being reborn today. Their new visibility has to do, at least in Europe, with the weight of religious factors in the fall of communist regimes, and the dramatic nature of many ecological problems (broadly defined, ranging from environmental pollution to genetic manipulation) that have risen from the application of the life sciences. In other words, while religions (in accordance with the Enlightenment and positivist view) were seen for decades as residual forms of experience, destined to diminish with the imposition of “modern” forms of life (technical and scientific rationalization of social life, political democracy, and so on), now they appear once again as possible guides for the future. The authority by which the Pope and other representatives of the world religions speak on the international stage cannot be explained by the new ability they have to talk to multitudes through the mass media.