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30/07/1999 |
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I should like first of all to express my thanks to the Niwano Peace Foundation. I am very happy to accept the Niwano Peace Prize awarded to the Community of Sant�Egidio, and I give thanks, in the name of the Community, for this significant recognition. The Community of Sant�Egidio has already received other prizes, but not all the prizes are equal. There exist so many different kinds, some very well known and others less so, that are awarded by institutions of varying prestige and that have very different meanings. The Niwano Peace Prize is certainly a famous international prize, and it is therefore an honor for the Community of Sant�Egidio to receive it. But there is not only this aspect. I consider it particularly important to receive a prize that bears the name of Rev. Nikkyo Niwano, a man of religion of the very highest character who has sacrificed himself to serve his neighbor. Each year since 1986, A Rissho Kosei-kai delegation has participated in our international encounters of people of religion. This means encounters taking place every year in various countries of the world � from Rome to Warsaw, from Brussels to Bucharest � to recall and continue the spirit that was celebrated at Assisi in 1986. At that time Pope John Paul II invited the leaders of all the principal world religions to pray side by side for world peace. On that day, the armies fell silent for a brief but significant pause in the more than sixty war zones scattered across the globe. It was a sign of how much can be done when people of religion unite. Since then, every year, the Community of Sant�Egidio has invited people of religion to continue a common effort of prayer and cooperation for peace. At these meetings, besides the Rissho Kosei-kai delegation, representatives of numerous Japanese religious organizations have annually taken part � Catholics, Buddhists, Shrine Shintoists, and Sect Shintoists (allow me to take this opportunity to thank the Japanese Catholic church and its bishops for having facilitated and encouraged these meetings). I consider this prize a message that Rissho Kosei-kai transmits to the whole world through the Niwano Peace Foundation, of favoring an encounter among all whom Pope John XXIII called people of good will. I believe that by awarding the prize to the Community of Sant�Egidio, there has been a wish to make a contribution to recognizing and helping in the situations of war and suffering with which the Community of Sant�Egidio has sought to concern itself. Examples are those in Mozambique which, with the peace concluded in Rome in October 1992, have been resolved satisfactorily after a long civil war that caused millions of deaths; and those unfortunately still going on, where war � we hope � has just ended, as in Guinea-Bissau, or where it still rages, as in Kosovo. Some may ask what people of religion have to do with the issues of war and peace in the world. Should not such issues be dealt with by politicians and diplomats? The Community of Sant�Egidio has been called �the UN of Trastevere,� referring to the district in Rome where the Community has its headquarters. But the appellation is not exact: members of Sant�Egidio are not diplomats or politicians, they do not represent countries or world powers. They are ordinary men and women whom the Gospel has taught the love of one�s neighbor and concern for the poor, and who therefore have fostered concern for human suffering and pain. As you know, every day all members of Sant�Egidio meet the poor and marginalized with what progressively becomes a personal rapport that I would call friendship. In fact, we seek not so much to assist or help people as to become brothers and sisters of those whom the Gospel calls the humblest. Speaking before so many Buddhist believers, I am sure of being understood: concern and compassion for suffering is truly a treasure that Buddhist tradition has bestowed on all humanity. And it is just this concern for humanity and in particular for those who suffer most that has prompted us to concern ourselves with the situations of wars. War is often, in fact, the mother of all poverty, as we see in many African situations, or nearer here, in Cambodia, a country that still has not fully recovered from the tragedy of the 1970s, and where every year 170 children out of a thousand under the age of five die. We believe the concern fir those who suffer is a responsibility of every human being, and we believe that in the name of this suffering one can talk to, pray with, and invite whoever has the possibility of doing so to confront the world�s problems. Experience has taught us that often wars break out, continue, and fail to end because no one wants to make the effort of dialogue. It is an effort apparently useless and undoubtedly demanding. It seems that it is not worth the effort to try to understand the reasons, often apparently absurd, that people have for fighting, and that it is a waste of time to try to get the combatants to understand the pain of those who suffer from war. Actually, our experience teaches us that this effort is not useless and that often is the only really effective path. At times, wars are interrupted because someone stronger stops them, but then they break out again after a number of years, as unfortunately happened in Angola. Since 1989, the world has become more confused, more complex, and, it seems, even more fragmented. Various situations appear even farther apart, the problems always less capable of a single solution. In the last ten years, the terrifying threat of global annihilation has bated but many local wars have broken out. It seems easier for wars to break out, and many people seem able to start them: small countries, ethnic groups without governments, political factions, and others. At the same time, however, just as it has become easier for wars to start, it has become easier to contribute to peace. Anyone can make war, but anyone also can make peace. I believe that the Niwano Peace Foundation is steadfastly moving in that direction. In fact, this prize is recognition of the importance of the cause of peace and of all the efforts that can be made, anywhere in the world, to promote peace. No one is so humble that their contribution to peace is useless or irrelevant. We can all make a contribution to peace. The Niwano Peace Prize is important recognition for whoever receives it, but it expresses the determined desire for peace of him who establishes it and continually makes it an instrument to promote world peace. In recent decades many voices have been raised from Japan to meet, get to know, and have dialogue with adherents of other religions. It is one of the most significant expressions of a movement that has developed in Japanese society in the last decades when, having overcome but not forgotten the traumas of the Second World War, and having reached a plateau of economic well-being, Japan has begun to question itself anew about its role in the world. Its financial role, above all in Asia, is well known and there is no need to emphasize it. But also relevant is its contribution in the sphere of international cooperation, from Albania to Burundi. Japan�s preeminence in this area is well known. The choice of promoting international cooperation so much is very significant also in relation to Japan�s previous history, and in this sense Japan�s experience is particularly close to that of many European countries, among them Italy. Undoubtedly, Japan appears as a great country today; it does not present itself, however, in the guise of a great power in the traditional sense of the term. This is a novel aspect, and to my way of thinking very positive. I know that today there is an open debate here about the role of Japan in the world, and I know that there are those who hold that this role is inadequate compared with the levels reached today by your country in many important areas. Many would like major investments in the armament sector and a more consistent military presence. In reality, a debate like this returns periodically to the surface in many national situations. Actually, the framework of intentional relations has changed enormously in the last decades. Today there exist forms of national presence in the world more efficacious than the traditional ones. Personally, I believe that if Japan, although it is a great country, today does not want to be a great power in the traditional sense, this does not derive only from its shouldering the burden of a tragic history but from the international conditioning it has undergone in the last fifty years. Meeting Japanese men and women, above al people of religion, I have in fact often had the impression of great modesty, as if their principal preoccupation were above all not to disturb. In this sense I believe that, at the heart of Japanese society, there are those who � and I am thinking above all of Rissho Kosei-kai and other religious groups � have reexamined in a profound way the tragic historic events of the Second World War, and in particular the dramatic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On February 25, 1981, Pope John Paul II, visiting Hiroshima, said: �War is the work of man. War is destruction of human life. War is death. Nowhere do these truths impose themselves upon us more forcefully than in this city of Hiroshima, at the Peace Memorial.� And he added: �It is with deep emotion that I have come here today as a �pilgrim of peace.� I wanted to make this visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial our of deep personal conviction that to remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.� I believe that these sentiments are shared by many Japanese people of religion, who intend to remember the past and commit themselves to the future. This is for me the first occasion to visit Japan, and I am grateful to the Niwano Peace Foundation also for this occasion that has granted me. For many years I have cultivated a particular interest in Japan and its people, and I consider this meeting an occasion that I would like to use in the most intense way possible. Permit me therefore to touch also on a final topic that is very close to my heart. It is the topic, I shall say right away, of the death penalty. The Community of Sant�Egidio, in cooperation with Amnesty International and other international organizations, has launched an appeal for a moratorium on executions throughout the world starting with the year 2000. Right now, a collection of signatures is under way on a global level in support of this appeal, to be presented in the coming months to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Undoubtedly, the issue of the death penalty is very delicate. Among other things it is being applied in very different forms from country to country. It is not possible to pass a single judgment on such different situations. But as I have already mentioned, we live in a world ever more interdependent, and even issues we seem to regard only as the internal problems of single national societies now concern the whole world. We have arrived at a point in the history of humanity when the issue if the death penalty is not a concern of one country more than another, but a general struggle of all nations and of all peoples to reduce the level of violence in the world. Because of the role that Japan and Japanese religions play in the world, I hold it very opportune that you, too, will make your voice heard on this issue. Among those who are condemned to death in the world there are also � but not always, and this too occurs to us � persons who have committed serious crimes. Our thoughts go first of all to their victims, to the sorrow of their family members, to the loneliness of those left behind. But in considering the death penalty � what involves, its intrinsic inhumanity � we ask ourselves: what purpose does it serve? Then the thought arises, can a state, a law-abiding nation, a developed society, place itself on the same level as those who have killed or committed other offenses, and itself kill? The West declares itself proud of its principles, among which are those that constitute so-called civil law and on which is based the insistent request to respect human rights. However, the death penalty contradicts all this. It often happens that particular cases of persons condemned to death � because of apparent innocence, extreme youth, or something else � arouse public opinion and individual consciences. It is necessary nevertheless that a just, but occasional, concern for the accused should be accompanied by more comprehensive reflection. One does not always succeed, in fact, in examining closely enough the many and complex aspects of this extreme judicial sanction: from the coherence with which a state imposes its laws, to the practical utility of a deterrent to crime; from the conditions to which the accused is subjected, to the desire of the victim�s relations. Often one is for or against the punishment without having adequately evaluated its many human, moral, social, or even economic implications. The moratorium we propose is deigned exactly to foster comprehensive reflection in the most ample and complete way possible. To this campaign heads of state and people of government have already let their support, such as Czech President V�clav Havel; people in the worlds of culture and entertainment; and representatives of the Christian churches and the major world religions. In consideration of the importance of this initiative and of your human sensibility, I allow myself to draw your attention to this appeal, promoted by the Community of Sant�Egidio and others. It is an appeal that I would define as coming from all men and women of good will; from all, that is, who want to sign it. The year 2000 is a date full of significance for the Christian world, and prompts Christians to look with greater faith and greater hope to the future. There is, however, a need for all people, Christians and non-Christians, religious persons and those who are uncommitted, to look with greater faith and greater hope to the future of the world and of humanity after such dramatic and violent century. The moratorium on the death penalty is a step in this direction. Suspending executions throughout the world and taking a deeper look at this problem would constitute a sign of innovation that would influence positively the spiritual and social development of the whole world.
Andrea Riccardi
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