President Sergio Mattarella said
community relationships and debate are essential to build the
future in a message to Bernhard Scholz, president of the
Foundation Meeting for 'Friendship Among Peoples' behind the
45th annual gathering opening on Tuesday.
The event organized by members of the Catholic activist group
Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation, CL) wraps up
on August 25.
Mattarella said the theme of this year's meeting - 'If we don't
search for the essential now, what are we looking for?' -
focuses on the "extraordinary transformations we are
experiencing.
"There is a need to search for the essential just as global
flows of information are becoming swollen rivers, while
technological sciences show us solutions that were unimaginable
until yesterday, while opportunities offered to single people
once again suggest the fallacious flattery of the omnipotence of
mankind", he said.
"However, faced with new opportunities for humanity, we are
affected by the horror, the atrocity and escalation of wars, the
will to dominate, with a dramatic return to the past.
"Feelings of fear, lack of confidence, at times indifference,
not rarely spite and hatred, are back.
For this reason, concluded the president, "it is essential to
put the person back at the centre - the desire for a full life
in community relationships.
"Because the essential doesn't lie in an isolated I, which is
self-sufficient, but in meeting with others, in the discovery of
the truth brought by the other, and thus in walking together
towards a tomorrow that must be conceived and built.
"The educational and cultural commitment which the Meeting
manifests has great value", added Mattarella.
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