Address by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the International Meeting for Peace titled “Daring Peace – Interreligious and Cultural Dialogue”

Allow me to thank the Community of Sant’Egidio for this new International Meeting for Peace.

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Her Majesty Queen Mathilde of Belgium whose participation honours this meeting and to the important religious dignitaries who call us all to a collective commitment: to dare peace.

Keeping alive the “spirit of Assisi” evoked by John Paul II is a very meaningful testimony.

Is the interaction between States a clash or an encounter?

What has enabled the steep growth in all of humankind’s rights and the recognition of human dignity?

In the 20^th century, recognising other people as being equal, exchanges, and giving mutual access to our respective resources defeated the idea that, in order to survive, we needed to fight to deprive others of their goods.

Weaponizing nationalism against other nationalisms arises from considering other people as enemies, if not as illegal or even inferior presences, in order to arrogantly, and sometimes violently, affirm a claim of dominion.

For over three decades, all this seemed to belong to the past. The end of the Cold War, the Reagan-Gorbachev dialogue and the start of a deep global interdependence, seemed to have opened a period of pacification.

Today we are facing a very different scenario, also in Europe.

Force once again attests itself as the yardstick of international relations.

Through the European Union we have created a condition – for now among its members – in which arms would be silenced forever.

It was consequent to the democratic will of its free people, and not through the imposition of an empire or of one of the dictators who took centre stage last century in promoting inhuman experiments.

A condition and values that held sway by influencing many other regions of the world, starting a phase aimed at globalizing rights and gradually bridging the gap between the people of the North and South of the world.

This season was not free of tensions and high prices paid by civil populations, as in the neighbouring area of the Balkans.

To tackle the crises, the United Nations Organization developed instruments to be used in the persevering pursuit of roads to peace as an antidote to the temptation to resort to force and subjugation.

Over time, public opinions started to play an increasingly significant role, as did popular peace movements, and communities like that of Sant’Egidio, which have developed peace-oriented paths.

Theirs is a precious commitment which appears to be all the more essential in the current geopolitical scenario.

The “Spirit of Assisi” which is being relaunched during the past few days reminds us all that peace is not a result easy to achieve without constantly devoting ourselves to it.

Peace is to be sought, nurtured and “dared”, to quote this year’s evocative title.

As His Holiness Leo XIV recalled: “we need to disarm minds and disarm words in order to truly foster peace”. I embrace the appeal that he launched a few days ago during his visit to the Quirinale Palace “to continue working to restore peace in every part of the world and to increasingly nurture the principles of justice, equity and cooperation between peoples, that irrevocably underlie them”.

In the face of these words and witnessing the instability, tensions, conflicts and violence – also verbal – that characterize our contemporaneity, we record the spread of behaviours that, if applied to coexistence within our national societies, would deserve to be called thuggish.

It is a mystery how behaviours generally considered to be reproachable, if not seriously lamentable, when applied to normal human relations, can claim to be considered political facts in international relations.

While the word “dialogue” is characterized as being a sign of weakness and submissiveness instead of being an act of strength.

The show of force and the “faits accomplis” presume to acquire the nature of definitive situations while they are only the premise for the outburst of future conflicts. It is our duty to combat them.

With foolishness and, even more with cynicism, the “cost” of war, also in terms of human lives, is often perceived by belligerent parties as being lower than that of peace.

Let us ask ourselves: what leads people to allocate enormous resources to be burnt on the altar of war and, instead, not to build peace? We need to radically change the mindsets and the behaviours chosen.

Of course, peace requires great courage and a lot of work, but peace is the best option; peace is life; it is development.

Wars, Andrea Riccardi reminded us when he evoked “Fratelli tutti”, leave the world worse off than before. It was not by chance that in 1939, Pius XII warned: “Nothing is lost with peace while it all can be lost with war”.

In the Near and Middle East, in Ukraine, in Sudan, and in many more parts of the world, how long will it take to restore interpersonal relationships?

I agree with the words uttered by Chief Rabbi Goldschmidt: “it is necessary to change and seek peace together”.

Today, the courage of daring peace takes on an even more valuable meaning.

The news recently coming from Gaza in the wake of the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement, as well as the release of the hostages, marked the first steps in a concerted understanding between the parties in conflict in the Middle East, reminding us that peace processes need perseverance, patience, mediation, and taking responsibility.

Institutions, diplomacies, and numerous other “peace facilitators”, including religious communities, perform this work on a daily basis, often away from the limelight and without aspiring for superfluous external recognition.

Allow me to recall a phrase by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayeb – also a facilitator of future developments – who, when talking about peace and interreligious brotherhood, reaffirmed the need for everybody to hoist “the banner of peace instead of that of victory and [sit] at the table of dialogue”.

The force of prevarication must be countered with the tranquil force of peace institutions.

Our wish is that the “spark of hope”, as was defined by Pope Leo XIV, triggered in the Holy Land, might also extend to Ukraine, where negotiating initiatives are still struggling to materialize while the suffering of children, women and men caused by the ruthlessness of Russia’s aggression gives no hint of diminishing.

What is going on impels us to persevere in giving a common, balanced response driven by a sense of justice and respect for international laws and the universal application of human rights.

These are the principles with which the Italian Republic identifies.

The contribution of peacemakers, who build bridges and establish relations between communities in conflict, and of peacekeepers, who monitor the respect for the ceasefire and the protection of the most vulnerable members of the population, is priceless: sparking peace even in the most hostile contexts.

The message is clear: there is always an alternative road to the violence of arms, a different and more convenient way of settling conflicts, avoiding the fatal risks of uncontrolled escalation whose effects put at risk the survival of humankind. 

In the mind of Man, the memories of the tragedy that characterized the last world war risk fading: sitting with us is Kondo Koko, a Hibakusha, a survivor of the nuclear bomb that devastated Hiroshima. Even what appeared to be a watershed in history, now seems to be questioned.

We cannot omit to recall that to dare peace includes and embraces other aspects: the wide poverty-stricken areas of the world, the hardships of migrants, the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few instead of its diffusion.

Religions, through the force of their authority and with their definition of “holy” peace, in the indefatigable pursuit of what unites human beings and in the promotion of global solidarity, speak up against war and in favour of peace.

We are all called to renew our faith in the cause of peace.

Let us make the appeal launched in this meeting shared and common to us all: let us continue to dare peace.

Let us continue to invest in dialogue and mediation processes, to support those who suffer, to build bridges between peoples, in order to contribute to forming a world in which peace is not illusion for dreamers but a shared reality.

The reality in which, as Pope Francis reminded us: “the dignity of every human being is recognized, when brotherhood becomes the inspiring principle of a more equitable and sustainable international order”.