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30/11/1995 |
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ONWARD! MOVMENTS |
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If you ask about Sant'Egidio in Rome, the reaction will often be: "That group working for world peace." Although their home is a tiny convent in Rome's busy Trastevere neighborhood, their activities are spread throughout the entire world: Algeria, Sudan, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Jerusalem� The Community of Sant'Egidio began by helping the homeless and disadvantaged - and increasingly numerous immigrants pouring into Rome from Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Today, their evangelical mission has led them to undertake tasks which may seem "too big for their boots": interreligious dialogue for world peace and negotiations between warring factions in world trouble spots. The Church and even the UN have turned to Sant'Egidio mediators more than once, for assistance in delicate international negotiations. The Community's successes have earned it the nickname �The United Nations of Trastevere." On the occasion of Sant'Egidio's 20th anniversary, Pope John Paul 11 described the Community's special contribution: "�Charity, the true source of evangelization, service to the poor, dialogue� this is the heart of your commitment. This is also an inheritance for the Church of Rome, which you help to renew; and you renew yourselves constantly in prayer, supporting yourselves in Christ." In 1968, a few students from Rome's Liceo (Virgil High School), decided to �change the world� - turning to Gospels for guidance in their longing for justice and human solidarity. The group led by 18-year old history student Andrea Riccardi, son of a bank director, ensconced in a comfortable middle-class life Those were heady days for youth: Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Herbert Marcuse, university takeovers. Riccardi's group spread into the poor- Roman neighborhoods reading the Gospels helping the solitary and unfortunate, those who could not cope with the city's rapid urban and commercial expansion. At first the Church hierarchy 1 regarded this youthful zealous � and overtly Catholic group - as a new and still-to-be tested phenomenon. It was only later, in 1973, when the newly named Sant�Egidio Community moved into an ancient Carmelite convent1 in Rome's Trastevere district, that the Rome diocese appointed Don Vincenzo Paglia (rector of the neighborhood's chief Basilica, Santa Maria in Trastevere) to be the Community's "Ecclesiastical Counselor." In 1986, the Community of Sant'Egidio was recognized by the Holy See, in the New Code of Canon Law, as a "Public Association of Laity,� of the first such Catholic association - although some of its most important members can be priests or religious. Riccardi is now 45 years old. President of Sant'Egidio Community, and a respected professor of Church History at Rome's Sapienza University. The Community's Press Officer, Mario Marazziti is also Cultural Director for Italy's public radio/TV (RAI), and functions as the Community's spokesman in the world at large. SPIRITUALITY AND GROWTH During these services, members, Community priests, and sometimes Church or ecumenical visitors comment on the Scriptures. The prayer meetings are an important source of strength and solidarity for the entire Community. Trastevere is still the heart of the Sant'Egidio movement which has grown to 300 Sant�Egidio centers with 15,000 members. Of these, 13,000 are in Italy (8,000 in Rome): 2,000 are dispersed throughout the world (20 different count- tries in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and a small branch has been recently established in New York.). About 15 priests serve the primarily lay communities. Although Sant'Egidio's activities are based on volunteer work, Community leaders stress that this is not a volunteer organization. They describe themselves as a Catholic institution deeply committed to charity work, underlining their mature synthesis of prayer and action for justice. The Community�s activities can be divided into three areas: 1) social assistance to the poor, sick, homeless, old people, the handicapped and immigrants: 2) the promotion of peaceful solutions to regional conflicts through mediated negotiations, 3) interreligious dialogue for peace. SOCIAL WORK Sant�Egidio members are involved with marginal groups usually shunned by other Italian volunteers. They visit gypsy nomads in their camps outside the city. The Trastevere center offers language and vocational training, as well as legal and bureaucratic assistance, to the many immigrants who are streaming in from Africa the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES The Community is also involved in difficult peace negotiations in the Sudan, Algeria and in Jerusalem. For their tireless (and very discreet) efforts they were nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. First suggested by Samuel Sirat, President of the European Rabbis' Association. Sant'Egidio's nomination was also supported by the chief Mufti Sellani of Tunisia, the Archbishop of Algiers Cardinal Leon-Etienne Duval, the Islamic University of Rabat, and Bartolomeos I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Even politicians such as Mikhail Gorbachev and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have endorsed the Nobel candidacy of the Sant�Egidio Community. The movement has been major promoters of interreligious dialogue. The Community�s annual �international Meetings Peoples and Religions� gather leaders of the world�s major religions for important initiatives towards world peace. The first of these interreligious peace conferences, held in Assisi in 1986, was attended by Pope John Paul II, who praised the event as a unique contribution to world understanding. CARDINAL MARTINI ON SANT'EGIDIO In an interview with the Rome daily Il Messaggero (March 21, 1993), Cardinal Martini, discussed his relationship With Sant'Egidio: I became acquainted with Sant'Egidio on the occasion of their tenth anniversary (1983). In the Community I was immediately struck by a combination� of a profound sense of prayer and the Scriptures, and an intelligent attention to the very poorest populations and to difficult social situations in times when religion was becoming either extremely politicized or retreating into pure spirituality, the Community's path seemed to answer a need which I - and many others apparently - felt: for a form of evangelical Christianity, capable of responding to people's suffering. Along with Sant'Egidio volunteers, I ministered to the poor in Rome, participating in prayers, discussions, vigils, liturgies, Scripture meditations and fraternal get-togethers. After my transferal to Milam I was no longer able to follow their activities so closely. I see, however, that their sphere of action has now expanded into important political areas, including international, ecumenical, and interreligious activities. Still, I sense the same personal and fraternal contact with the people, along with their focus on the major social and political problems of the time, and all of this suffused with an atmosphere of prayer and attention to the Word of God. This is a difficult equilibrium but it is life according to the Gospels, lived by a complex society in daily commitment." _______________ What is a Community of Sant'Egidio? Can you tell us how your commitment to charitable work among the poor of Rome led you to make a commitment to international diplomacy and interreligious dialogue? There was no specific moment when we said to ourselves: yesterday with the poor, the tramps or the people suffering from aids, with the immigrants coming from the Third World, or in the civil fights against preconceptions and racism, and today in diplomatic mediation for peace. There was no moment when we changed because we have not changed. If you live next to the poor and enter into a committed alliance with all the poor living in our cities, in the mountains of Guatemala or in the Salvadoran shantytowns, you inevitably end up hearing the cry from the South. If you remain faithful to your friendship with the poor, one day you inevitably start working to get rid of the war which is the mother of all poverty. Let us consider, for example, the famous case of the peace in Mozambique. It was achieved after 25 months of complicated negotiations at the headquarters of our Community, in Trastevere, in Rome, with the official mediation of the Community. It was, I think, the logical outcome of a relationship first based on a concrete friendship gradually developed into a relation of support for a population which had suffered terribly from the war and from famines. We first tried to provide food for them, like any other organizations, then we tried to help them to acquire more religious freedom under a Marxist-Leninist dogmatic regime, and finally we started working for the �impossible dialogue� between the government and the guerrilla band. Many African and Western governments had failed because none of them had the confidence of both parties. The "miracle" in Mozambique was made possible because a group of people decided not to set any the limits for themselves except one: that of remaining faithful to a friendship, and because they were willing to take on their responsibilities as Christians, seriously, in the face of suffering and war, peace came. It is certainly not always easy. I remember how hard it was under communism to help the Christians in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine for example, or to find the channels of communication with Albania when it was still the fortified �Mount Athos of atheism.� It is not always easy because we have very few economic resources. We only have human resources. Our energies are limited but I think we are just beginning to discover how many unused resources there are in the Gospel. Sant'Egidio may not be very famous and yet people from the Community have succeeded in getting many Christians from the that Middle East out of extremely difficult situations, sometimes even putting their own lives in peril of death. You are trying to save thousands of Chaldean Christians in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. You are also very close to the Christians in the south of Sudan and to the minority Christian communities in Muslim countries. Isn�t your dialogue with Islam a bit strange? What are the chances of reaching an agreement with the most radical wings? The Second Vatican Council, in the Constitution Nostra Aetate, and John Paul II himself, firmly indicated the direction of dialogue with the Muslims and with all believers considering themselves �sons of Abraham.� And we must not forget the �Spirit of Assisi,� which should make every Christian feel the importance of changing his attitude not only towards the Muslims but towards all believers, no matter what religion they belong to, and which should also urge them to look for common grounds for invocation, prayer and collaboration, in order to defeat the great enemies of humanity: suffering, injustice and above all, war. It is also a historical necessity. In the new strategy, let us say, of the North against the South, with an iron curtain rising up in the Mediterranean, I think people are being particularly shortsighted. The world of Islam is a very large and complex world of almost 1 billion people which cannot be easily comprehended. It is a world you cannot simply put a label on. It is important to find the ways of a real co-existence, even if it is difficult. There is not alternative. AS so the dialogue, it is clear that we cannot simply make the other in our own image and likeness. The other must remain himself. We have to consider the radical wings of Islam but there are also many different types of Islam trying to re-discover their identity. Radical Muslims are human beings as well and many things can be changed through dialogue. Sant�Egidio promoted two meetings of the lay and the religious parties to launch a dialogue wit the Algerian government and put an end to the terrible violence that was paralyzing the country. After extremely hard but constructive negotiations, the Algerian rebel movement signed a platform that could serve as a s basis for the dialogue with the government. The Economist described it as �exemplarily democratic.� And kind of fundamentalism, if isolated and left to itself, runs the risk of becoming more and more radical. There is no alternative to dialogue. If you have to describe the �spirit of St. Egidio� in a phrase, what would it be? Do you really think that dialogue between religions, and prayer, can be effective in the resolution of world conflict? It is true, however, that many Christians do not believe in the force of prayer. And yet, peace is a gift from God to which all people of goodwill must give their contribution. Prayer might appear a weak force but it is and it will always be our real force. I would like to remind non-believers that the conflicts going on today in the world are the result of many factors. One way of contributing towards peace is, I think, to do our best to stop people from using religion as a pretext for war.
Antonio Gaspari
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