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LANGUAGES AND THE PEACE-MAKING PROCESS
LANGUAGES FOR PEACE International Conference
St. John's University, November 7 th , 2006
Mario Marazziti
Community of Sant'Egidio
Introduction
Without language we are lost. Without words, there is a desert on earth and in the emotional life of each one of us. Words make us count for each other, help us count on each other. Language, like a smile, distinguishes human beings from animals, even though too often people abandon the path of language and chose that of silent conflict or use their words to enflame and justify their wars. Words shorten or increase distances. After a crisis, just one word, the right word - from a parent or someone we love - can make all the difference. For an elderly person alone in an insitution, the word of a visiting friend or relative helps time pass. Words make an emotional desert flower. They make the difference between feeling that everything good is over and feeling that it is worth living another day. Often those who ask to die are really asking that we alleviate their pain and let them know that they are important to someone even if they are old or weak. Sono le nostre guerre urbane . Words are the antidote to the illness of our age - solitude. Among the old, solitude claims more victims than illness does. And the same is true for teen-agers when you consider that suicide is the second cause of death after traffic accidents.
Truly words can make the difference between feeling dead and feeling alive.
We live in a world of millions of sounds and words and yet we struggle to recognize the Word that can give us life. We are thirsting for it, but have trouble finding it. Yet it is the Word that will give us life.
PART 1
The History of the Community of Sant'Egidio
A spiritual man once said of Jesus: "Jesus is the Word issued from silence" and, truly, the story I am going to recount today could never have happened if that Word of Jesus had not broken through the silence. What is known today as the Community of Sant'Egidio could never have been born.
If you were looking for a description of the community, something like you would find on Wikipedia , it might sound like this:
The Community of Sant'Egidio is an international organization of ecumenically minded Christians. It began in Rome in 1968 with a group of high school students, friends of the poor, and children of the Second Vatican Council. Now the the Community is socially active in the poorest areas of First World cities and Third World countries, and is recognized by the Vatican as an International Public Association of the Laity. Sant'Egidio is a leading provider of aid to the poor, ecumenical initiatives and interfaith dialogue to prevent conflict, terrorism and war. Rooted in the Catholic Church, it is in the forefront of ecumenism and West-East and North-South relationships, a main actor in dialogue with secular culture and believers of all denominations as well. With more than 50,000 volunteers in 70 countries around the world, Sant'Egidio works alongside the poorest of the poor, providing schooling, emergency humanitarian aid and health care, working to solve the AIDS crisis in Africa, defending human rights, promoting reconciliation and peace in war zones, and generally making life more human and livable in large cities and in the global South, where many of the poor live.
Among its many achievements, the Community has created a model AIDS prevention and treatment program called DREAM (Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition) that has been replicated throughout Africa. In the opinion of the Heads of State of the African Union, the results achieved by DREAM and its global approach have made it, along with the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the only two "success" stories in fighting AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Sant'Egidio achieved worldwide recognition for its mediation efforts to end the civil war in Mozambique after 16 years of fighting left 1 million people dead. In just the past two years, the Community: started the peace process in Togo; fostered the unilateral ceasefire that reduced the number of victims during the Liberia transition; re-launched the peace negotiations in Darfur; and encouraged the ceasefire and final negotiations to end in August 2006 the ten-year civil war in North Uganda, a cruel conflict marked by the kidnapping of children, a high number of child-soldiers, the trafficking of young girls and enslavement. Sant'Egidio has built hospitals in Africa, and provided food, shelter, schooling and legal aid to thousands in Latin America, Africa and Asia; it also provides care for the aged in Europe and America.
The Community is a charity, a non-profit organization and NGO recognized by EU and by UN with an ECOSOC status. It has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and has been honored with the UNESCO Peace Prize and with the Balzan Peace Prize (won by Pope John XXIII and Mother Theresa in the past) for its work in Africa and for the anti-AIDS DREAM program, which is internationally recognized as one of the most effective projects for the prevention and treatment of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa .
That is Sant'Egidio's official biography, but I would like to share with you pieces of the "inside story" of how a group of students -- maybe more restless than average, but similar to any other group of students -- searching for an authentic way of living and hoping for a world less unjust, became what is known as the Community of Sant'Egidio . It is a story each of us, each of you, may be able to relate to.
The Word of Action
It all started from the Word. It involves a student, my friend Andrea Riccardi -- who today is a university professor and one of the most widely recognized European scholars of contemporary history and contemporary Christian history. Andrea picked up an old book that had been thrown away. It was the Bible. Inside its covers, Andrea discovered the difference between words and THE Word. Inside that little book, he discovered the beauty of the humanity of Jesus, his tenderness toward every man and every woman. He discovered a Word that does not leave anyone alone with his or her problems, but rather a Word of friendship that changes lives. Discovering Jesus's forgiveness, his mercy, his affection for the poor and for each one of us, he discovered that you are not always condemned for making a mistake. Andrea decided these discoveries would be the basis for his life and he communicated that to others. That is how the story began, a story no one could have imagined and one which, thank goodness, has not ended.
It is the story of a group of friends who today are trying to save Africa from AIDS and to stop wars in many parts of the world. This group of friends is not looking for publicity, but believes, as Jewish wisdom teaches, that a person who saves one life saves the entire world. And every poor person on the street is a whole world. One must work to change laws, provide more opportunity, provide a sense of family, affection and education instead of holding out prison as the destiny of the poor. Each day, we try to reduce the needs of the poor, to ensure that we ourselves are not imprisoned by greed and selfishness. Sant'Egidio is the story of normal people, men and women of every age, in more than 70 different countries who have not given up the idea that world needs to change and that it can be changed. If we work together.
In the developed world, instead of changing things or at least trying, we are encouraged to adapt, to conform to a world filled with nonsense, injustice and emotional illiteracy. Yet we know, it is clear to everyone, that the emotional deserts of our cities do not make sense, that the difficulties faced by so many families and so many young people are not acceptable, and that the huge gap between the condition of a person born in the northern hemisphere and a person born in the southern hemisphere is unjust. Instead of turning off the television for an hour and actually talking to each other, so often we are advised to go to a therapist.
It is said that wars cannot be stopped with flowers nor even with words. Yet, wars are unleashed with words. Think about conflicts you have seen between individuals, in heavy traffic, with your next-door neighbour, inside your own house. These are little wars. But think about the bigger wars between groups, races and nations. No war can continue unless each side demonizes the other. A terrible side effect of every war is that truth is always the first victim. You cannot declare war on your own; to fight and kill you must believe the other is not like you.
We often say: "Give me facts, not words" in an attempt to be concrete. But the Bible starts the other way. There are no facts, there is nothing, before the Word. In Hebrew the term is "dabar." The "Dabar" of Yahweh (the Word of God) has a double, inseparable meaning.
"The Word of God is action," St. Thomas explained (In 2 Cor 3,2,1), but this also can be turned around "The action of God is his Word." The Word creates as it resounds. The desert, MidBar, is the place where the Word of God resounds. The Hebrew dabar is not "logos" in the classic Greek sense of a word thought, rather d abar is an event. (Gen 15,1). While it indicates by name that which we want to speak of, it also creates it just as when in the Genesis story night and day, the animals and all creation were given names and came into being. The Word of God is powerful; it realizes that which it proclaims as it proclaims, even if sometimes we cannot see the result.
The Language Of Peace
The language of peace, of peacemaking and of the Community of Sant'Egidio is what I want to speak about here, introducing this conference. Imagine you were in Rome or at Berkeley, Stanford or St John's in 1968. You want to change yourself and the world around you. The students who would become known as the Community of Sant'Egidio were children of 1968, but also children of the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965. It was the Council that put the Word of God back at the center of the life of Christians, of Catholics. No longer would reading the Bible be a bit out of bounds for laypeople, students. This marked the beginning of Sant'Egidio, along with an encounter with the poor who lived in shacks and urban ghettos on the outskirts of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We did not have a name, so we adopted the name of a little church that had been closed down, but which we reopened as a place to gather for evening prayer in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. Trastevere is similar to the East Village or Greenwich Village here in Manhattan: it's a place for culture, music, restaurants, young people and tourists. But for 2,000 years Trastevere also has been a port neighbourhood, as well as the place where Christianity began in Rome because it was the Jewish neighborhood. Saint Peter and Saint Paul began preaching there. Today, in the same neighbourhood one of the most beautiful basilicas in the world, Santa Maria in Trastevere, opens every evening at 8 30 for anyone who wants to pray with us - and 200,000 people each year choose to do so. In the apse, there is an ancient mosaic that shows Jesus with his arm around his Mother's shoulder, just as he keeps his arm around us. Tom Cahill, in his latest bestseller, wrote: "If he does this, why can't we?" The basilica is a place where one hears the language of peace, affection, and love. The language of warm and human relationships, without barriers.
All of this has to do with peace-making. Which is why the Community of Sant'Egidio was awarded the UNESCO Peace Prize and the Balzan Peace Prize, the same award given previously to Pope John XXIII and to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. But I am trying to give you a bit of the "inside story", a testimony, not a newspaper article. For this reason, I want to go back in time so that we can see better what is in front of us. And, also, so that this extraordinary story can be lived by others as well.
Before the council, laypeople were not supposed to read the Bible on their own. It was thought that Bible reading could be dangerous if one did not have an expert guide. Generally "lay" meant anyone who was not a priest. In the Middle Ages, laypeople in the church were even referred to as "beasts." But in the Bible, there is an episode in the Book of Numbers where, at a certain point, a donkey begins to speak the Word of God to the Prophet Balaam, who was resisting. Now, if the Word of God could sound from the muzzle of a donkey, then those "beasts" who are laypeople also can hear and proclaim the Word of God.
St. Francis of Assisi was a layman, he never became a priest, and he used to say: Vangelo sine glossa , "without additions," in other words, the whole thing. He wanted to live the Gospel completely, and not partially, as a friend of the poor. St. Benedict, who founded Western monasticism, was nothing other than a layman who created a new family able to help the poor with hospitality and to change the world with brotherhood, prayer and work.
We were a group of students, first in high school, then at university. Today I'm 50 years old. I have a family. I became a grandfather three months ago. That little Gospel we held in our hands helped us discover Jesus, his passion for each man and each woman, particularly his love for the poor. We discovered his complete and beautiful humanity, his attractiveness, his ability to surprise with forgiveness, his lack of condemnation for the woman caught in adultery, his desire to heal the sick and infirm, to not be surprised by the betrayal of his friends, his inability to hate even when he was on the cross. That little Gospel helped us discover the poor, who were the first blessing in our life. There was and still is a silent war underway between the world of the rich and the world of the poor. Today many people in Europe think their well-being is threatened by immigrants, even though those same immigrants make a decisive contribution to the well-being of Europe. Perhaps the same thing is happening here. It's shortsightedness. It's false. Wars always create boundaries, allies and enemie, mine, ours, them, the others. It creates distance, demonization and caricatures of the other.
Imagine a group of university students who tried to create an alliance, a stable friendship with the poorest people and who thought that they could change the world by doing so. And it changed a bit. Many of our homeless friends now live in houses; tens of thousands of children have been able to go to school; the civil war in Guatemala ended after 34 years of fighting; with a direct intervention in Darfur, we have convinced two rebel factions to return to the negotiating table. Shortly after the Nine-Eleven terrorist attacks, we held a Muslim-Christian summit in Rome to reduce the risk that followers of Islam would feel under attack by the West; expressions of anti-Semitism have been weakened by the serious commitment of Christians, like the members of Sant'Egidio, to stand alongside their Jewish neighbors; and many poor people have discovered their human dignity through friendship, bread and words.
The Gospel, with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10), helped free us from the inhumanity of this war against the world of the poor. We all know the parable. A priest, a man of the temple and a Levite, and a foreigner, an ethnic and religious enemy, are the three main characters. All three come upon a man half dead, beaten by bandits, on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. The first two do not stop, they have other things to do. They are afraid, they do not like the unforeseen, they do not want to get involved and have their lives contaminated. Maybe they think it is a trap that can ensnare them, too, if they stop. Or perhaps they think that the beaten man went looking for trouble. Only the foreigner, the Samaritan, does not think of himself and stops, treats the wounds of the half-dead man, takes him to a hotel where he pays the owner to care for him until he has healed. The Gospel asks us: "Who was a neighbour to the man who fell into the bandits' hands?"
In the tradition of the Christian East, there is an icon that illustrates everything. The image of the Good Samaritan, bent over the body of man half dead, is depicted with the face of Jesus. But, the man half dead also has the face of Jesus. They have the same face. Jesus is the Samaritan and he is the poor. Always.
Life, the end of a war against the poor, begins when we make ourselves neighbors, when we begin to approach them, care for them, speak with them. When we allow at least one suffering person to enter our family. It could be an older person who rambles apparently without making sense, but who only wants to know that she's important to someone. Or it could be a difficult child, an orphan, who breaks everything. He needs to know that his new, adoptive parents, are not going to show him the door and that they will love him even if he misbehaves. It could be a child-soldier in Uganda, wounded, sent by missionaries to Rome, to our community, for treatment in an Italian hospital. No one knew that he was a child-soldier. It appeared that he was mute. He did not speak, but rather seemed frozen by something no one was able to decipher. Then, one day, a young Ugandan woman, a member of Sant'Egidio, was visiting Rome. She went with other community members to see him. She spoke the same dialect as that teen-ager. They come from the same area. A s they talked, she discovered that that boy participated in an attack on her village, an attack that claimed the life of her grandmother. That boy, who would not talk and who was frozen by horror, started to recount what he had seen and done, and that young woman from our community, still in mourning for the loss of her grandmother, started to cry and started to caress that boy. That boy, that soldier, started to cry; for the first time in his life, he found a sister, a family. This is the miracle of forgiveness, the miracle of the Community.
I would like to tell you another ancient story, which explains a lot of our subject, and introduces me in the central and conclusive part of what I want to tell you. It is a story set in the Near East Wars, or in an African or even an American forest. Imagine an arid area where there is little to eat. An area with wild animals and plants. There is a man on guard, and finally he feels a presence at a distance. But he has only one rifle and only one shot in his rifle. He cannot miss. He feels that the aggressor is about to arrive, but it is dark and it has to get closer. He waits and tension grows. The danger grows. Either its life or mine! He lets it get closer and by now it is certain, it is a big one. Perhaps it is a puma, or a lion. Closer: perhaps it is a bear and one only shot must hit the head or the heart. Very close, finally: he can see its shape, the broad lines, the head, the eyes ... But when he sees the eyes he recognizes him: it is not a bear, it is not a puma, it is his brother!
Here is the secret of the end of every war and the key of a language of peace; in order to end a war, it is necessary to begin to look at each other at a range so close and to talk until it is possible to recognize in the other the human traits and not the wild and diabolical ones of the absolute enemy. This is also the work of the Comunità di Sant'Egidio. In every sector of the community's or of the personal life, in the big wars that devastate entire peoples. Friends of the poor and therefore friends of entire peoples made up of poor, engaged in taking away grounds for war, which is the "mother of all poverties." The key consists in reducing distances, creating an alliance and a new family with those that have been hit by life. And this transforms the world and our personal life.
There is another word, along with the image of the first Community, the one of the Acts of the Apostles, of the disciples that "had everything in common" and were only one heart and only one soul," that had a decisive role in the life of Sant'Egidio. It is the one of the Last Judgement , in chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel. Here too, we know well this passage: the king divides the peoples at the end of times, on his right hand and on his left hand. To the ones he says, "Be blessed by my Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. Because I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a foreigner and you made me welcome, I was naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me." The upright ask, "But when, Lord?" And the answer is, "Insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me."
Jesus calls them "brothers" - it is a very beautiful word that in the New Testament is used only for the disciples and the apostles: it is the word that defines the borders of the Christian Community, of Jesus's family - "these least smallest brothers." That is to say he introduces in the Christian Community and in his family the outcast, the poor, not as an object of our attention, but as part of our family. Independently from their moral qualities; not only the "good" poor or the "educated" poor, but the poor as such, they are part of our family only as poor. It is the opposite of the idea that the poor, if they are poor, are guilty of something. The poor are part of our family: this means "to look with the eyes of Jesus" at the world. And this word "brothers" has been decisive in our youth as well as today.
Language can create an abyss between men, as indifference can. But it can shorten distances and create a new family in a divided world and evermore divided. And there is an affectionate language that is born from his tender emotion: "They were like lost sheep without a shepherd" (Mt 9). It is Jesus who looks and is moved over Jerusalem; it is the eyes of Jesus that speak and precede his word in affection: Peter, we know, denies Jesus three times during the Passion, though he had said: "My Lord, for you I am ready to go to jail all the way to death." But he was ready to do this for a Lord that would fight, for a winner, someone strong, not for a loser, defeated without even fighting. And while Peter thinks of and looks only at himself, still convinced of his strength, he then runs away when confronted by a woman who recognizes him as a friend of that man, mocked, beaten, a poor devil suspect of illegal things. Peter, in the fullness of his strengths, does not raise his sight from his own self; Jesus, who is already humiliated and beaten, turns to look at Peter and looks at him with affection, even if he has his suffering that is much more compelling.
That look is the safety for Peter: it is the word that does not leave him, not even while he is betraying. From that point on, the heart of Peter becomes loving emotion, shame, sense of debt. Because of that look, Peter will not stop to love the others and Jesus. Jesus on the cross is a "poor," an abandoned and cursed poor, like the others who die on the cross. He is sentenced to death and, furthermore, is innocent. But even there Jesus looks at his mother and at the young John, the disciple whom he loved, and entrusts them to one another. His look, his word, create peace, like a new family.
"Give to the poor bread and the Word."
A great pope, Gregorius Magnus, says of the poor, "Give them the bread and the word." Not just bread, but bread and word.
On the 1 st of November of each year, and so it was a few days ago, in the Basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere, one of the places where the Comunità gathers every evening to pray, there is a great liturgy to remember all those who died of AIDS. It is a great feast of life, and each one is called and remembered by name. At each name that is mentioned, a candle is lit and at the end a flower is given to all the attending people. Even the most beaten life, the most violent, the most apparently cursed meets love, memory and affection. Relatives, friends, the sick and the healthy, know that they will not disappear into nothing. It is the memory that has no end. The word, the name, each one with his history: everything, good things and terrible things, each crumb of affection and of suffering and of love, nothing is lost and forgotten.
In our world so many try to accomplish extraordinary enterprises, so that their name is remembered in time, after them. The name of these men and women, boys and girls, elderly and children, is remembered with affection. This heals many wounds and many sicknesses and many divisions.
The poor in our society are like shadows: they are invisible because our life flows just the same, whether they are there or they are not. At least this is what it looks like. It looks as if for us a billion people, that live and die without clean water, do not exist. It looks as if 30 million people in Africa with HIV/AIDS virus without therapy, do not exist, while in the United States and in Europe, it is possible to live with AIDS thanks to therapy. It looks as if what we do not see does not exist. At times we see it on TV, on the road, but we do not know any more how to look, and understand: homeless, alone, slaves, war prisoners, whole peoples of poor, people whose human rights depend on geography, on where they were born, and not on the fact that they are human beings.
But the Word gives a name, makes one exist. For this we think of ourselves, and we try to live, as friends of the poor . The friends have a name, a story, and when we meet, we start again from where we had left each other last time. Everyone can live this, without any exception.
The language of Sant' Egidio and the one of the Gospel is the language of friendship. It creates an alliance and a family between people that would seem divided by different destinies, without blood ties. It is the challenge of living without enemies even in times in which it is easy to identify enemies. But it is not a naive choice. It is also the way not to present a whole world to those who love the clash between civilizations, war, terror as a daily way of life. Friendship and dialogue are really not the choice of the weak and the naive. It is the only way not to build a world made of walls, slave of fear, besieged, a world of everybody against everybody else.
Let us think of Islam and Islamic extremism, of the few but terrible Osama Bin Laden in the world, and of the more than one billion Islamic believers in the world. Al Qaeda and all those who believe in violence would like to be in the forefront of a billion Muslims, and other extremists would like to be in the forefront of a billion Christians or Hindus and/or any other religion, the ones against the others. He who loves violence, let us remember, is not afraid of dying: but he is afraid of the dialogue. He feels that his enemy is he who demonstrates that a world of hatred and reciprocal fear is a fake world. He is afraid of him who creates bridges, who shortens distances, of him who always succeeds in seeing in the other a little piece of himself: because this, sooner or later, in the end disarms.
It is written in the letter to the Ephesians: "In fact he is our peace" (Eph 2, 14). Our Communities, and each one of us individually, does not resign to the inevitability of war and the domination of the culture of violence. The Gaudium et Spes , a key constitution of Vatican Council II, stated: "Warned by the calamities that human race has made possible, let us try to take advantage of the truce that we are now enjoying" (81, 1606). In some parts of the world that truce has never begun or has ceased for a long time: Near East, Holy Land, Iraq ... terrorism ...
The Vatican Council II, in its message to the youth, said, "It is in the name of this God and of his Son Jesus that we exhort you to enlarge your hearts according to the dimensions of the world ." The invitation was and is, " E nlarge your hearts according to the dimensions of the world. " The central motif of the Council, in the Gaudium et Spes, was and remains the "compassion." Just at its start it said, " The joys and the hopes, the sorrows and the anxieties of today's men, especially of the poor and of those who suffer, are also the joys and the hopes, the sorrows and the anxieties of Christ's disciples, and there is nothing genuinely humane that does not find an echo in their hearts. " (GS 1, 1319). In the words of Paul VI: ..."You, modern humanists, who renounce the transcendence of the supreme things, recognize our new humanism: we too, we, more than anyone else, cultivate man/woman."
I remember a few years ago we tried to prevent the outbreak of the war in Kosovo, and we had almost succeeded in setting an agreement between Milosevic and the Kosovo Albanian leader Rugova for the restitution of schools, universities, houses to the Albanians in Kosovo and a large administrative autonomy. The agreement was signed while the two did not speak to each other directly, and we went backward and forward between the two. Then the international community did not help, and two years later the war broke out. During the war, again we helped, in refugee camps and also the nonviolent Kosovo leader, Ibrahim Rugova, a sort of Gandhi of the Balkans. When he ran the risk of being killed in his house, we obtained by Milosevic his liberation and his safe arrival in Italy. This story was told, at the time, by Newsweek. I remember a meeting with the president of Macedonia, in those difficult Balkans. "It is difficult to be men when the world is so inhuman," he said. This is what happens in every war that draws the worst from every man and every woman. Nonetheless, every war, also the bloodiest, can end. It has not yet been invented the war that puts an end to all the wars, the war which is the last one. But it does not exist either the endless war.
And it is true that wars can be stopped and emptied, terminated. And that we, too, can do a lot to this end.
It was a day in July of 1990. In Mozambique, a country that borders on South Africa in the South, they had been killing each other for 15 years. A civil war desperate and bloody. Mozambique is the last country in Africa to have acquired independence after colonialism, in 1975. Four centuries of Portuguese colonialism, and not even one day of peace after independence, because of the outburst of a nationalist bloody guerrilla war. The war breaks out between RENAMO, the Mozambique resistance, and the government of the FRELIMO. RENAMO, anticommunist, but initially supported by the racists of Rhodesia or the South African apartheid, on one side. On the other side the government: initially Marxist Leninist, then, throughout the years, social democratic and nowadays liberalist. Almost one million dead, two million that had to leave their homes. They did not talk to each other, the two sides: they called each other "armed bandits," "terrorists," "assassins." In the middle the civilian population, besieged by death and chronic famine. Life did not have anymore any value. Young girls, in order to live in the cities, would prostitute themselves for a pair of sandals. The others were starving to death and lost a leg or their life on antiman mines. I visited an area in the country, where there were hundreds of tombs, all of them dating in the same week. There had been an epidemic caused by dirty water on bodies shattered by hunger, and all had died dehydrated. I.v.'s and a disinfectant would have been sufficient to prevent those deaths. On the hundreds of tombs there was neither a tombstone nor a name, but only the most precious objects owned by each one: a torn shoe, half rusted can of soft drink, a little pot blackened by smoke, a comb.
They had never met but they had been killing each other for 15 years. In two separate rooms, the two delegations, in Rome, in the headquarters of the small former monastery called Sant'Egidio, from which we take our name, they were asking us, "How are they dressed?", "What do they look like?". Each one was concerned only with the wrongs he had suffered and wanted to try the other. In a war that in the end totaled one million dead, do you think that only side could be right?
Why had they come to us, of all people? For years we have tried to help in famine and emergencies. We have negotiated with the government in order for it to allow more freedom and religious freedom to Churches. We have worked for the economic recovery, here and there, and with projects of cooperation. But in the end it was like collecting water in a bucket with a hole. And little by little we started "dreaming" peace, in an effective way. We have earned the trust of both parties and we could put forward the proposal ("heretical", at the beginning) of a first secret/confidential/off-the -record meeting to begin to talk: in Rome.
RENAMO wanted to clear everything and have all the guarantees first and, at the end, concede the ceasefire. The government wanted the ceasefire immediately, and talk of the constitution and of the rest, and of sharing the power, later. Andrea Riccardi, the Comunità di S. Egidio, intermediaries facilitating the meeting, proposed the working method of Pope John XXIII as diplomatic method: "Put aside what divides and start with what unites." At the end of the first three days of work the first joint and public communiqué: "Many things divide us, but we recognize ourselves as brothers of the common Mozambique family." The taboo had been broken: the "assassins," the "armed bandits," the "terrorists" were really "brothers of the common Mozambique family." Twentysix months of construction of a common language, of dialogue, of a political language rather than a military one, led to the final signature of the General Peace Agreement, on October 2, 1992: a unique case in international diplomacy. A peace that still holds, a democracy that has really started, tested by three political elections, and two presidential elections, with a change of the ruling class: a model for all Africa, but useful also outside. It has been necessary to pass many tests, including the mistrust of international governments, that regarded with perplexity the role of an NGO in the place of international diplomacy or of their own government. In 26 months and 11 rounds, it has been necessary to look for what each time was the common interest, the bottom line, beyond the fears of both. At times the two parties themselves did not know which one was the real interest of its own part, because they were coming from a deformed vision, because they were inexperienced in democracy and of democratic play, because they were lacking a peace language and mentality, after 16 years of war.
The language of peace-making is the language that manages to find the true common interest, because this will foster the reconciliation also after and only at the end of the arms. It has been a language that has transformed a guerrilla fighter into a political opponent. It has become a school of democracy, of common language, of negotiation: a school. To those who were used to living in the bush, the language has taught that there are ways other than arms to solve conflicts.
It is a language that was born from weakness: the weakness of Sant'Egidio has been also its strength, the key for its credibility. At Sant'Egidio there is a crucifix without his arms, ancient, it is only the trunk. We call it the Christ of the impotence , or of the weakness. It is the invitation for each one of us to change the world with weak means, the cross and even without his arms. It is the invitation for us to be the arms of Jesus to love all men and all women. And in order to become the official mediators in a negotiation that has terminated in 1992 one of the bloodiest conflicts of our time, we did not have economic resources, pressure instruments, and not even vested interests . Around us, obviously, we have created synergies also with diplomatic corps and international military experts, and a meaningful role was played by the American administration. Our strength was and is credibility, flexibility, the fact of not having any other interest than peace and reconciliation, the culture of the territory but also the culture of experts of humanity, as Paul VI used to say at the UN. When, shortly before the final peace, there appeared to be an insurmountable blockage, we collected tens of thousands of letters from all over Mozambique, asking the negotiators to conclude the peace, telling of the suffering of their people. The first letter, on top of all the others, was the letter of the father of the chief of the guerrilla, Alfonso Dhlakama!
The following month, August 1990, was a really difficult time for the just started negotiation. None of the two parties trusted a great international power as a mediator and not even a nearby African country; there were no precedents, and the negotiation was at risk of ending before getting to the middle of the problems. It was the first time that the delegations chiefs were meeting alone, for lunch. They loved fish, we had learned. We decided to prepare a good fish and some good Frascati wine, dry and cold. But the African chief, in the African culture, is entitled to the head of the fish, a symbol of authority. Who should receive the head of the fish? We decided to cook two fish and to give to each one the head of his fish. It was an important passage that proved decisive. They understood that we really wanted the peace and that they could trust us, and demanded that the Comunità di Sant'Egidio become the official international mediators.
I could continue, with a long list of attempts, some successful, that have created a language of peace and reconciliation. I have participated with Nelson Mandela in the negotiation that has terminated the civil war and the ethnic clash in Burundi.
But with much more strength than my words, I would like to tell you with the words of Celestine how a language of peace is born in the place of absolute hatred, that in one month has left on the ground 800,000 dead in Rwanda in one of the most insane genocides of our time. Prepared by the campaign of hatred by the Radio Hundred Hills, that demonized the other and created a climate of fear. Aline recounts ....
This is what happens in the Comunità di Sant'Egidio , and the word gives life also to whom is about to die. Rex os the name of a person sentenced t death in Texas, his penpal lives in Italy, and his name is Secondo. Rex, an 'old bear' how he defines himself, wrote his last letter to Secondo when he had a date for the execution. He had not been the real guilty bad guy and had not committed the crime, even if in his life he had not been a good guy.
In his last letter, July 2002, among other things he wrote:
I will be honest and confess that I am physically, emotionally and spiritually tired of fighting that battle (DNA test and all the rest: the date was deicded before seeing the result of the legal request for DNA test)- tired of living in a cage. Tired of the harsh upheaval of the emotions. I am truly ready for some rest for the body, spirit and soul. .. I do not regret that death is my escape from here - it is the actual escape - the method of it does not mean too much!! Yes, Texas will get their vengeance on me on October 1, 2002. But the State murdering me will not make me guilty of this crime. Sadly, it will not return the girl to her mother...
And I want to tell you a story. The sory of the starfish.
As a young man walked along the seashore at dawn he noticed an old man ahead of him. It seemed that the old man was erforming a ance. He would move ahead one or two steps - stop and bend down - then straighten up - step to the water's edge - then bend down again. He repeated this over and over again as he moved slowly along the shore.
Since the young man walked without pausing, he was soon catching up to the old man. Watching closely, he saw the old man was not performing a dance after all, he was instead carefully picking up starfish from the sand and placing them back in the sea. Curious, stopping near the old man, the young man asked : 'Why are you doing this?' , 'Because the stranded starfish will die if they are left in the morning sun', the old man replied.
'But the seashore goes on for hundreds of miles and there are millions of starfish everywhere! ' scoffed the young man. 'How can your efforts possibly make any difference?'
For a moment the old man contemplated the starfish in his hand, then turned and gently placed it into the sea. 'It makes a difference to this one', he replied.
Now, maybe you ask yourself why an old bear tells you a story of the starfish. I use it as a metaphor for your friendship. Life is the seashore. There are millions of people in Italy - they are the miles. There are thousands, 2 million of prisoners in the USA. We are stranded starfish. The many years we have in a cage is the morning sun that kills the stranded starfish. Millions of people in Italy do not ave any influence on my life. And you dear friend are unknown by thousands of other prisoners in the USA. The most important thing - as with the old man of the story is to the stranded starfish - you , Secndo, have made a difference to me. Your friendship has been placing me back in the sea after I have become stranded. You made a very big difference in my life. You were important to this particular starfish. My life is better from knowing you.
My love and respect always
An old Bear
Rex "
E' quello che accad e nella Comunità di Sant'Egidio . E la parola dà vita, anche a chi sta per morire.