Dear friends,
I am using this term on purpose instead of a long list of titles because I think that in the city that has been the home of Saint Francis this is the most proper one. Here we are all friends, who, with the limitation of our humanity and our love are trying to make this friendship grow. I come from Ethiopia, form an ancient and venerable church and from a continent I would like you to keep in your heart.
While I descended from Assisi to Santa Maria degli Angeli I clearly realized how important it is for us to meet here once again. I say again because this city has been, for several times the focus of our gathering, the centre of our prayer, the place of our reflection and the shrine of our invocation for peace.
I came here in 1994 and then as today I felt how powerful the �weak strength� of believers is, that weak strength in which the Community of Sant�Egidio has believed and believes in. This is the Spirit of Assisi, one together with the other and not any more one against the other. Was it a dream? Yes of course it was a dream but dreams are what make us all human, dreams are what keep us alive. And dreams eventually come true and become reality. How sad are those who dream no more and who only believe in the sad realism of a world that appears to be more and more marked by conflict. The Community of Sant�Egidio took this dream seriously and it has worked for so many years to keep it alive. We thank the Community for having believed even against all hopes that the Spirit of Assisi was indeed a great resource of peace.
The spirit of Assisi is the building of bridges. It is the building of a new civilization, the civilization of coexistence, in peace, in mutual respect and in dialogue.
This is why we are here today. We do not want a dialogue between experts, and experts indeed we all are, but we want most of all to show that living together is not only possible but it is also good.
The title of our meeting, that in its immediateness tells about the longing for a World of Peace that marks the life of so many who suffer under the joke of violence and injustice, is a question especially for us people of religion. In this second part of our meeting this morning we would like to ask representatives of religions to try to start to answer to the question that brought us here today. Around this table almost ideally the whole world of religions is represented.
