Mr President,

Distinguished representatives of the Christian churches and of the great world religions,

Authorities,

Dear friends,

I�m glad to greet you all on behalf of the Community of Sant�Egidio. I would like to thank all the personalities gathered here. This meeting benefits of ours from Catalonia�s warm and generous welcome: that of the authorities of Catalonia, of Barcelona and of Spain itself. Our gratitude goes to all of them, especially to Mr Jordi Pujol, President of the Generalitat, to the mayor of Barcelona, Mr Joan Clos. I also thank Cardinal Carles for the significant welcome of the Church of Barcelona. Allow me also to greet Mr Josep Piqu�, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The atmosphere, in Catalonia, favours this event. I like to picture inside it the roots of feelings and flavours embodied by the Majorcan Raimondo Lullo: he dreamt and practised dialogue as a way of meeting among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is the same atmosphere of dialogue preserved along the shores of this Mediterranean sea, a sea of many conflicts, but also of real co-habitation. But this atmosphere is also written in Catalonia�s recent history, the one of longed for democracy, achieved within the framework of modern Spain, within a cultural and economic dynamism, marked by its peculiar identity, but the intelligent persuasion about the necessity to experience, in the present National and European setting, a broader plexus of relationships. This climate entitles Barcelona as capital of dialogue. This atmosphere will find its full expression in the Forum Universal de Las Culturas in 2004.

Many friends and volunteers of all ages, members of the community of Sant�Egidio here in Spain, in Italy and in Europe worked at the realization of this meeting in Barcelona, with their generous commitment, finding here an atmosphere of profound collaboration. I thank all of them.

This meeting represents the fifteenth step of a path begun in Assisi in 1986. It is placed at the beginning of the century, in uncertain times for relationships among people and religions. Jean Daniel, with his acute perception, wrote these words referring to it: �The vanishing of the empires, which is, of their federative or imperial cement, the end of all unifying ideologies, the suppression of distances, but also the huge pressure of those who are destitute, who knock on the door or pass the threshold of those who have something, all this accelerates the cosmopolitism in the babelization of languages, in the overlaying of cultures and in urban aggressiveness�.

We have entered a time when we all live at a crossroads of messages of cultures of very different processes. It is the globalisation people discuss so much about, and it is the reality we live up with today. In the Nineties we saw how changes come so fast it is hard to keep up with them. It is also what religious worlds experience. At times, older generations lack the agility to keep up; the younger ones lack the deepness of thought.

Our meeting, gathering many people belonging to different religions, is not an homage to modern �babelization�, to the confusion of today�s world, where everything is mixed and looks the same, half syncretism, and half folklore. This meeting has at least a fifteen-year-old history: it begins in Assisi in 1986, where John Paul II invited the leaders of the Christian churches and of the major world religions to pray for peace. It was just a simple day of prayer, the ones beside the others, and not � as the pope said � the ones against the others. John Paul II realized it was necessary to propose once again the deep link between religions and peace. The spirit of Assisi, as this friendly approaching one another of different religious worlds is called, underlines that the message of peace is deeply rooted in most, if not all, different religious traditions in the world. In the Nineties, religions were to face the great problems of wars and of peace, of their relation with the idea of nation, of their relationships with the other countries, of their responsibility towards the large masses of the world�s outcast.

In the very last decades of the Twentieth century, apparently the most secularised in history, when the vanishing of religions has become a theory, at the very end of this century, it is surprising how religions, in some parts of the world, have been driven public. Sometimes this is connected to the rebirth of nations, others to the protest of those who are excluded, and others to the challenges posed by conflicts or to the redrawing of identities.

In Assisi, in 1986, a new way was opened, as cardinal Etchegaray � whom we greet � knows very well, since he was magna pars in that initiative. There was the risk of making of Assisi an isolated icon. We from Sant�Egidio realized that it was necessary to continue the path of Assisi, especially to continue its language of dialogue. A movement was born and it developed year after year, through several different steps, now gathering men and women belonging to different religions. Through prayer, the ones beside the others, an open and demanding dialogue developed, on religious issues or on the great problems of the contemporary world. I remember the meeting in Warsaw in 1989, on the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. The meeting opened while Poland was anxious for its future, and it ended in the silence of a common pilgrimage of all religions to Auschwitz.

I still bear in mind the meeting in Malta, in 1991, that gave strength to the peace negotiations for Mozambique, ongoing at Sant�Egidio, in Rome. The peace agreement was signed in 1992 at Sant�Egidio, and it put an end to an African war, which was so ignored to cause a million dead. Quite a few initiatives of dialogue pursuing peace, under the leadership of the Community of Sant�Egidio, are connected to its awareness that believers can contribute to peace much more effectively than they may believe. They have a �weak� strength of peace, as I have said in some occasion. It is a demanding lesson, that urges everybody to hope more and to be more daring: so that many countries in the world do not have to experience war or civil hatred anymore. Actually, many religious communities, in many parts of the world, are under pressure or tempted � in a way or another � to legitimate contrapositions, or worse to fuel conflicts.

I should recall much more of these fifteen years. I limit myself to remember the meeting in Jerusalem in 1995, that gathered the three monotheistic religions and ended symbolically planting three olive trees inside the walls of the Old City�

We remember that moment, especially in these times of severe recrudescence of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. As the peace process is in shambles, a question comes to mind, whether the three great monotheistic religions have or not a word to say, or an indication to give, besides what the politicians say and do - their own way - to pursue their national interests. It is a question that makes us uneasy. But it also calls for a new audacity, neither irresponsible nor unrealistic, but as a question of hope.

Finally, I remember the meeting in Bucharest, in Rumania, in 1998, which was so significant, especially among Christians, particularly between Orthodox and Catholic. We come from Lisbon where, last year, we stressed the importance of a culture of dialogue. It is not a matter of creating a front of religions against a secularised world, on the contrary it is about developing a new culture vis-�-vis the secular humanism that represents a sizable part of the European spiritual tradition. We believe that dialogue between the secular world and believers is part of the spirit of these meetings.

What do men and women of different religions want, and what can they do? They relate themselves less and less to the homogeneous worlds they live in: worlds of believers, or worlds sharing similar cultures. In our time people with different religions, or different ethnic traditions live closer to each other. This is what Europe experiences as it faces immigration, but also of new a common sharing between the East and the West of the continent.

This is the challenge Africa faces: especially in this time of difficulties, people are confronted with the frailty of their Nations, questioned by ethnic, religious or other kinds of differences. It is the challenge of the rebirth of nations, of the relations between religions and nations, of the processes of ethnic cleansing in several areas of the world. But this is also the challenge of the virtual world, where people come more and more in touch with everybody: in such a world we live more and more together, and we are poised to increasingly cross with people who are different from us. Finally, this is the challenge of a world where we can see everything, where we increasingly witness the plenty of a few and the misery of many people.

Cohabitation is becoming today�s human condition. Co-existence is the life of many people, of many religions, of many groups. It is not always easy. A coexistence bearing too many differences, broader global perspectives, provoke disquieting phenomena that we can witness with our own eyes: irresponsible individualism, defensive tribalism, increasing fundamentalism. There are people who feel they are attacked and are lost as they face new neighbours and a world, which is too big. Lost women and men are afraid of the present and of the future; they ask religions to defend their fear, perhaps with the walls of distrust. New kinds of fundamentalism mushroom, and, like ghosts, they are swarming and making many people uneasy. Ethnic or nationalist fundamentalism also grow, and eventually becoming terrorism. Fundamentalisms are simplifications, that fascinate the young, the desperate, people who are lost, people that feel this world is too complex, unwelcoming; fundamentalism appeal to unscrupulous politicians in search of shortcuts to power. And fundamentalism always bears the marks of hatred, sometimes of an ethnic struggle against those who differ because of religion or ethnic group.

Year after year we have followed the development of this scenario. Our meetings have been a living image of coexistence between different religions. Perhaps in the past religious worlds could ignore one another. In a world full of great distances and slow reactions, as it was in the past, to ignore one another may not have been less harmgul, but it certainly was easier. Today, reciprocal ignorance quickly brings to hardening. Isolated religious leaders, often find themselves trapped in narrow nationalist perspectives. The universality that all the different religious traditions share, is freed only by contact and dialogue.

Fifteen years of close dialogue highlighted what unites but also what makes different and divides. We are not a kind of simulators of unanimity. Also, we are not impatient or arrogant people who want to pack everything in easy homologation processes. Dialogue is the patient art of listening to one another, of understanding one another, of recognising the human and spiritual profile of the other. From the heart of the religious traditions, capable of dialogue, surfaces the art of coexistence and cohabitation; it is a must in a plural society, such as ours. It is the art of the maturity of cultures, of personalities, of groups. Religions, living between a single national community and their universal dimension, speaking about God, but living among people, can be a school of cohabitation and peace. The Christian Scriptures recall that �He is our peace�. The teaching of the popes of the XX century on peace echoes their voice. In the Islamic tradition one of God�s names is Salam, which means peace.

The religious perspective moves from the individual, considered as a creature of God and a brother, towards peoples, and towards the conviction that war poisons the earth.

Religions have no political power to impose peace, but by changing man from the inside, calling him to detach himself from evil and from his passions, they guide him towards an attitude of peace from the heart. Every religion has its own path. Nothing is the same. Nevertheless the atmosphere of dialogue makes our convergence towards peace ripen; it is clear in the appeals that end our meetings. We read in one of them, issued in Milan, in 1993:

�Our only treasure is faith. The sorrow of the world has made us bend over our religious traditions in search of that single richness that the world does not possess: we have heard a message of peace echoing from the depths, and felt energies of good come to surface. It is the call to get rid of every violent feeling and disarm ourselves of all hatred. The meekness of heart, the path of understanding, the use of dialogue for the solution of conflicts and contrapositions are the resources of the believers and of the world�.

And the appeal ends with these words:

�First of all, however, we have to reform ourselves. No hatred, no conflict, no war may find an encouragement in religion. Nor can war find its motivation in it. May the words of the religions always be words of peace!�

Men and women of faith share the conviction of the moral strength. They have not always been either worthy of it. But every religious community, made up of sinners, men and women, shows a human and merciful face, which should detach itself from the terrible utopia of a perfect society, that ideologies and sectarianism meant to enforce by means of violence. The moral strength of faith is deeply connected to the teaching of pity and mercy present in many religions. Pity, moral strength and spirituality are lived in local, definite religious communities: but they always keep a window open towards the universal dimension. The ancient religious precepts regarding hospitality towards foreigners are deeply connected to this, for instance.

In today�s world, the foreigner becomes close. Or, on the contrary, we discover dramatically that our neighbour has become a foreigner. Today, in a globalised world, people of different faith, ethnic background or culture, live together in the very same cities, on the same human scenarios, on the same national perspectives. While projects to achieve homogeneity through ethnic cleansing are still pursued, different people live together without destroying their national identities, and this creates new problems. The Community of Sant�Egidio, which has the honour to host this Meeting, works day by day on the ground of solidarity towards the poorest people in many big cities in Europe and elsewhere. Indeed most of us live a daily commitment of solidarity towards the outcast. At the heart of Sant�Egidio a movement was born, made up of both Europeans and immigrants. It�s name is Peace People and it expresses the will to break the wall of everyday extraneousness. A very rich representation of them is here with us.

Religions have a paramount responsibility in coexistence: their dialogue sows a peaceful pattern, repulses the temptation to rend apart the fabric of civil coexistence, to manipulate religious differences to political ends. But all this demands from religious men and women audacity and faith. It demands courage. It demands to bring down walls with moral strength, pity and dialogue. The task of religions to educate to the love of the art of cohabitation can be tremendous.

But tremendous is also the task of religions in recalling that man�s destiny goes beyond his earthly goods � as many of them teach. This task is part of an universal perspective, which means that all people are God�s creatures. Their wise men and their saints have always had a global perspective. And today our eyes can see far off. The globalisation of information carries us to meet distant needs and dramas. The eyes of people of religion cannot avoid crossing those of the poor, of the outcast, of marginalized people. Poverty and exclusion, in our contemporary world, question us.

It is not by chance that Africa has always been at the heart of our attention and it is today, with the presence of the president of C�te d�Ivoire, His Excellency Laurent Gbagbo, of authoritative men of culture, Muslim, Christian, Catholic and Orthodox religious personalities from the continent, among whom are four cardinals, the Ethiopian Patriarch, of the president of the Nigerian bishops. The writer Ahmadou Kourouma, in The sun of independence, has looked at the African world with freedom and depth of thought, well beyond an obsolete idea of the third world, and an even older Eurocentric vision: the richness and the poverty of contemporaneous Africa surfaces, as well as the spiritual richness of its people, the poverty of its condition and of the way power is used.

Africa has been subject of processes of westernisation and globalisation, which painfully and truly made its history. But today it risks to be marginalised. We believe however that Africa represents the test for today�s international politics: it is a decisive appointment for wiser politics and policies. But it is also so for the major religious communities. For us Europeans Africa is a part of our past we cannot relinquish, and which we have to come to terms with for our future. Indeed, and this is something we feel on the shores of the Mediterranean, that is a crossroads, Europe and Africa are not distant. Are they not part of the same world and of the same civilization? There is a new pact that has to be renegotiated between Europe and Africa, on the threshold of the new century.

It is not only a great question for Africa. In the African Communities of Sant�Egidio � and we are present in more than twenty African countries � we experience and witness a great yearning for hope and a better future for Africa. Not only from Africa, a call rises from the derelict of our world, but also from the rich peoples. It is a yearning for hope, for the future, in a great world, marvellous and terrible at the same time. It is yearning for a thought, a policy, a solidarity, which do not systematically exclude.

Religions have different answers. But dialogue among them is already a sign of hope: because people will not kill one another in the name of God and they will not call God to sanctify their hatred because they will look beyond their own boundaries. Discovering the face of God, they will discover the value of peace in a world like ours. This is a hope that truly moves hearts and energies.