Community without borders or walls

Friendship among people of different nations and cultures is the everyday way to express this international fraternity. Living this global dimension of life together means both to be open to the world and to belong to one family, the family of disciples.

In a world which, at the end of the second millennium is raising barriers and emphasising national and cultural differences so much that they become the cause of old and new conflicts, the communities of Sant'Egidio testify to the existence of a common destiny not only for Christians, but for everybody.

There are younger and older communities. Some are more populous and more rooted than others; some are better known in their localities, but all of them try to be and truly are a family around Jesus.

The community of Rome is the oldest. Being the first community, it performs a service of communion to the younger communities, with no other limit "but charity", as the Pope John Paul II said in Sant'Egidio on its 25th anniversary, in 1993. This unity is expressed in a concrete communion and solidarity among brothers and sisters and it is the best structure for the life and activity of the community itself.