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Middle East, Africa, Europe: at the heart of the Meeting for Peace in Barcelona. Introductory Press Conference

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The international meeting for Peace "Living together in times of crisis. Family of peoples, family of God", organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio and the Archdiosese of Barcelona, was presented to the press today in Barcelona.

In his welcoming statement, Cardinal Sistach thanked the Community of Sant'Egidio for bringing the spirit of Assisi back to the Catalan capital nine years after the meeting in 2001. The president of the Community of Sant'Egidio, Marco Impagliazzo, stressed at least three major topics that will run through the international meeting: the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

Peace in the Middle East will be at the center of the inaugural debate, with the participation of Yuli Yoel Edelstein (Isreali Minister of Diplomatic Relations and the Diaspora) and Mahamoud Al-Habash (Minister of Religious Affairs in the Palestinian National Authority). The question will come up again in a round table discussion on the future of Jerusalem.

Africa is represented with high level delegations from countries normally ignored by the press but where Sant'Egidio has been involved for years. Delegations arrived from Guinea Conakry, where Sant'Egidio is working in the delicate elections process; from Malawi, where the Community has set up a network of clinics and laboratories for the treatment of Aids patients, which everyone at first thought would be useless but which has treated over 90,000 people; Burkina Faso, a country where three million children were registered in one year (and otherwise would have wound up in the body organ or slave trade); from the Ivory Coast, where Sant'Egidio has been involved for years to combat the ethnic strife that was dividing the country.

There will be a decisive focus on Europe, where the need to rediscover the roots of a continent with a Christian soul has become evident. In this regard the president of Sant'Egidio pointed out that in Europe, where the process of unification in Germany, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (October 3, 1990), has improved the population's condition and made the country a driving force on the continent, as opposed to those countries that went the way of division, losing in terms of economy and status.

This year's meeting is marked by an exceptional confluence of Christian denominations. Due representatives of the Orthodox Patriachate of Moscow will be in Barcelona side by side with nine Roman Catholic cardinals. Twelve Orthodox churches are participating as well as the presidents of the two major Lutheran and Methodist faiths.

And next month the Pope arrives. "The relationship between the two events is remarkable", Cardinal Sistach of Barcelona said. "In the next few days in Barcelona there will be meeting of the family of peoples, which is the family of God, an issue very important to Pope Benedict XVI, as is the dialogue between religions", he added.