Marco Impagliazzo: In Berlin we questioned ourselves on how to build peace in many different parts of the world where peace is threatened by war. We are all bound by a common destiny, and therefore the responsibility to make this world better can only grow

Mr. Chancellor,

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

The long journey of women and men of religion for peace that began in Assisi in 1986 has now come to Berlin, this capital city of a great European country, which faces the world. After years of suffering and lacerations this city speaks to us of a hope that can always be born in the lives of peoples: no wall is forever. From the path of these days we feel encouraged to build peace in our societies and in the world.

 

We are grateful to you for accepting a conversation with so many people who questioned themselves, here in Berlin, on how to build peace in many different parts of the world where peace is overwhelmed or threatened by war. It is such an important question, born from listening to the cry of the millions of people who call for peace in this world. No man is an island said a great spiritual man of the last century, just as no people and no country is. We are all bound by a common destiny, and therefore the responsibility to make this world better can only grow, first of all by not turning away from those who suffer most from the consequences of inequality, poverty and war.

 

This pilgrimage of ours from city to city, for 37 years has created a people made not only of religious leaders but of different peoples, of cultures, of joys, hopes and sufferings. Through this journey we have experienced together the wars and pains of the world: from Africa to Latin America, from Asia to the Middle East. Being together between different people gave birth to an ambition in us: that of building a new story even where it seemed that nothing could change. Thus were born so many Peaces that changed the history of entire countries. I am thinking of Mozambique, where peace was negotiated at Sant'Egidio, I am thinking of Liberia, El Salvador, Côte d’Ivoire, the countries of the Sahel, Mindanao and others.

 

Our dream is that in a world where so many screaming ‘mes’ dominate, we can recreate every day the ‘us’, the sense of living together. In our meeting in Assisi in 2016, Zigmund Baumann stated that “our future depends on the ability to increasingly expand the pronoun ‘us’, and  reduce the space granted to pronoun ‘them’, which can only happen if we are capable of erecting a more empathetic, fraternal, human and dialogical society”. And he continued: 'insistence on a dualistic opposition favours hostility and fear, rather than encouraging hospitality and the perception of the common good'.

 

This is what gave meaning to the European construction after two world wars. This is what we feel a strong need for today as a new great war is shedding blood in Europe. We are committed to looking at the future, when peace will have returned and when it will be necessary to rebuild friendship and a shared sensibility in Europe. We are also concerned about the consequences that a long war is causing in the poor south of the world. That is why we call for a just peace with which to reconstruct the global security architecture put in crisis today by Russian aggression.

 

We are happy that you are here today, to listen to your vision in such a complex world, in which much seems to be fragmented and in which we want to continue to believe in a common destiny. Martin Buber said: 'the world is not always understandable but it is embraceable'. It is true: in humanity and in history not everything is clear, not everything is understood but the most important thing for us is to embrace, even if we do not understand everything. What matters is that everything is close to our hearts, as an Italian priest who was friends with the least used to say: 'I care'. That is why we want to believe that from this embrace a new story can be born.