Home Honourable guests Addresses on the III Congress Statement of President of the Community of Saint Egidio Marco Impagliazzo

Statement of President of the Community of Saint Egidio Marco Impagliazzo

Mr. President, the Head of the Secretariat of the Congress, leaders of world and traditional religions, I would like to convey greetings from the Community of Saint Egidio, the movement of the Catholic Church, spread over 70 countries around the world and brought together more than 50 000 members working on a voluntary basis for the benefit of the poor, in the name of peace and dialogue among religions. In recent decades, the Community of Saint Egidio attached great importance and made many efforts to promote dialogue among world religions in the name of peace. We started this movement with an unusual experiment in 1986 in Assisi, the city of St. Francis, when Pope John Paul II brought together the leaders of world religions, to say the joint prayer for peace. It was one of the great prophecies of the end of the last century: we can no longer pray, standing against each other, and need only to pray for peace standing side by side with others. Prayer is the most powerful tool given by God to the faithful of all religions. Since 1986, the Community of Saint Egidio was applied great efforts to expand the area of peace and initiated the annual meetings of religious leaders in many parts of the globe. It gives me great pleasure to be present at this meeting. Kazakhstan for centuries was an example of peaceful coexistence of different nations, cultures and religions, as well as served as a bridge between Asia and Europe. The Community of Staint Egidio is closely connected with this country, and these ties were strengthened in 2007, thanks to the arrival of His Excellency Mr. Tokayev with the large inter-religious delegation from Kazakhstan at the meeting organized by the Community in Naples. In recent years we saw how the prayer helped you to find new strength to fight for peace. Many important places took place in the world: peaceful transition from communism in Eastern Europe, peace processes in Central America and South Asia. The Community of Saint Egidio took many actions to develop the African continent, and we see that in South Africa justice is restored, in Mozambique peace is reinstated upon a long peacemaking process to which we made a significant contribution. Of course, there still have unresolved conflicts. But believers do not give a way to despair and do not give up, because they are well aware of the tremendous significance of peace. Jesus said, the Gospel said that the peacemakers should be called sons of the God, and the community obedient to the God will inherit the world. The historical lesson of the last decades of the twentieth century suggests that peace is possible, and the war is a gamble that does not work. Indeed, Christians and representatives of the great religions are well aware that peace is the only righteous matter, but not war! Benedict XVI said: “In a world torn by conflicts, where violence is covered by the name of the God, it is important to repeat again and again that religion will never be the conductor of hatred. On the contrary, religions can and must offer noble resources to building a peaceful human society, because their words about peace reach the very heart of the man.” There are close links between this spirituality and search for ways of establishing peace. Spiritual world has its own power, submissive and weak, compared to arrogant political power or economic interests. It is the power of the prayer, love, dialogue and communication. Yes, spiritual world has a peaceful and peacemaking force that can change both people and history. Anyone who follows the way of spiritual development, knows that reality can not be restricted to economic interests and the law of brute force. A new world is possible: not with a wave of a wand, but through the patient process of building peaceful coexistence by means of conducting short regular dialogues, respect for freedom and identity of other people, solidarity with the poor, young, with life in all its forms and manifestations. We need more humanity and spirituality to build a new world. Humanity and spirituality can actually help us to build a just, human society, society of people.

 

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