Speech by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, at the International Meeting: “The Cry for Peace. Religions and Cultures in Dialogue”

Allow me to thank President Marco Impagliazzo for inviting me to this remarkably significant meeting.

Let me address a very cordial greeting to the French President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, who is a guest in this event.

I would also like to convey a warm welcome to the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, to the Secretary General of the Muslim World League, and to the Chief Rabbi of France.

I extend a warm greeting to all the participants. Welcome to Rome.

The timing of this meeting is a call to all of us to shoulder a compelling responsibility.

The “Spirit of Assisi” has been stirring since the 27th of October 1986, when John Paul IIfirst convened the representatives of world religions to the city of Saint Francis, calling to put an end to conflict.

It represented a short universal truce while an interreligious prayer rose to call for peace.

It bore witness to the extent to which religions and politics can and must engage in dialogue; and to the strength that religions can bear and express in the loftiest and most conscious sense.

In the face of such a worrying present, the proliferation of conflicts in so many parts of the world, and of a war that once again brings bloodshed to Europe, one would be led to think that humankind is not capable of learning from its mistakes and that it has lost the guiding collective memory expected to prevent it from falling into the same tragic errors.

The prayer of Assisi was a seed consciously sown by religious leaders in the face of the aggression against the gift of life, the individual right – of every person – to live in peace. It was a vigorous expression of their capacity to harvest – as Professor Riccardi said earlier – “the yearnings, sensitivities, and expectations of the communities rooted in the territories, close to the hardships, the hopes, the sweat of the people”. And, equally, it was a vigorous expression of their liberty.

It was a seed harvested by those who, like the Comunità di Sant’Egidio, work daily, also through the priceless action of mediating for peace: not “chance meetings” but the tenacious pursuit of paths to peace.

This is the commitment of so many key players – both of religious inspiration and not – towards the building of bridges of solidarity and dialogue: they deserve our sincere gratitude.

It is a commitment that calls for everyone to contribute to ever-more forcefully disseminating “the cry for peace”.

This is the reason for our being here today, in such large numbers and from every corner of the world.

The challenge is always the same: perseveringly pursue paths of peace through the international community’s collective commitment to foster dialogue, negotiation, relying on diplomacy instead of weapons.

The job is arduous and requires patient care and efforts because peace is such only if it carries with it the antidote to the outbreak of new wars, if it is sustainable over time, and if it is widely shared.

It is a legacy that, in Europe, we have taken for granted, but the fragility of which we are now dramatically reminded.

Peace is a process, not a point in history: it needs courage, determination, political will and the commitment of single individuals.

In this effort, the work of religions and their leaders is essential, starting from the reminder that men and women are “the sons and daughters of the same heaven”.

This applies to the mutual respect between different communities of worshippers; it applies to the respect paid to the dignity of every person and of all peoples.

Therefore, if religions are – as His Holiness Pope Francis said – “part of the solution for a more harmonious life in society,” thus affirming “the universal value of fraternity”, it is the value of solidarity that should inspire international order.

It is the conviction expressed by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, when he reaffirmed that “peace among peoples is a fruit of peace among religions, and religious fraternity is the drive for universal human fraternity.”

These words mark essential steps forward.

There is no “holy war”!

Instead, what there should be is a “holy peace”, to genuinely attend to humankind and its future.

Disorder produces disorder. Wars have a multiplier “domino” effect. Wars are contagious.

Moreover, as Rabbi Haïm Korsia wrote, “we need to reinvent dawn”.

Over time, the genuine commitment of religions cannot disregard this goal. And it is comforting to see how many steps forward have been taken in the dialogue between the leaders of different religious creeds and how much they contribute to the cause of peace.

There is ample space for civil and religious leaders to join efforts for the universal collective good, each within their purview and according to their own prerogatives.

As is natural, it is the task of institutions and political leaders to collaborate in outlining an international order to thwart the temptation of war.

The condition of peoples is characterized by stark inequalities. The North-South divide in particular – worsened by inherited and ongoing conditions of great hardship – is far from reaching an acceptable point of balance in acknowledging the dignity of every human being. The ensuing issue of emigration and immigration calls upon all our consciences to probe the effective and actual application of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  

All this urges us to reflect on what grounds we can build a more equitable international order, aware that human fate is inevitably shared by all of us and that the common good of a single community must form an integral part of the good of all other communities and not oppose it.

“Making peace” arises from an urgent need: restoring relations among humankind.

The end of war – ratified by conventions and treaties – has often represented the cornerstone of a new international equilibrium, based on acknowledging the existence of winning powers and losing States.

Seventy years after the signing of the United Nations’ Charter in San Francisco, it is legitimate to look at the valuable distance covered and, at the same time, evaluate the limits of the experience acquired.

We need courage to take a step forward.

Is it possible to imagine that the constituent power of our international order might not only hopefully put an end to conflict but also place the spirit of peace at the basis of a new global order?  

If you want peace, prepare it: this is the exhortation frequently repeated across the centuries.

Peace cannot be achieved through the exaltation of war and the wielding of power.

Because peace is either integral or it does not exist.

And it does not exist if it is not corroborated by truth and justice.

These are the principles enforced by the Constitution and the actions of the Italian Republic ever since its foundation.

The Constitution is the fruit of a conscience painfully forged by the devastating savagery of World War II, to which we were led by the dictatorships of the 20th century.

It is the same spirit that drove the founding fathers and builders of Europe – starting from the Schuman Declaration of 1950 up to our current European Union – to give prevalence to the culture of peace over the warring spirit that had raged across the centuries.

In the aftermath of the war, the international community decided to establish a multilateral system primarily aimed at preventing and handling conflicts.

The situation of the UN Security Council would soon largely limit the pursuit of this aspiration and, despite this, successful cooperation has undeniably been achieved between States.

A further step forward would have been necessary as the lack thereof– in the 1990s – failed to overcome the competition between different political and economic systems that had characterized bipolar tensions in the world.

Drives reemerged that made us regress. Even sectors that had up to now entailed common scientific efforts, such as the space sector, risk becoming an arena for military competition.

It is the comeback of the demons – the ghosts – of man’s aggression on man.

The reckless war waged on Ukraine by the Russian Federation is a direct challenge to the values of peace, seriously endangers the Ukrainian people on a daily basis, and also damages the Russian people, generating dramatic consequences for the whole world.  

This aggression overturns the rules, principles, and values of international living.

It deepens the divisions within the global community which is instead called upon to find urgent cooperative solutions to common problems: health and food crises, the devastating effects of climate change, the threat of terrorism.

Now more than ever, we need effective multilateralism.

In this common effort, the contribution and the expression of the whole of society becomes ever more important, along with that of international institutions and of other States.

The threat that we have come to face leads some to raise the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons.

This is the perverse temptation to escalate the conflict, making violence spiral into more violence; to promote the prevalence of the logic of the most brutal and senseless power struggle, which we thought to be confined to an obscure past.

Faced with such terrible scenarios, our consciences urge us to defend our right to peace, which is what brought us together here today.

A right to peace that does not ignore the right of self-defence and does not disregard the duty to provide assistance to people under attack.

Whether this happens in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or anywhere else in the world.

In Ukraine, as anywhere else, it is necessary to reconnect the human lifelines broken by the war: the lives, families, human and social bonds.

It is necessary to stop a new “faultline” from crossing the world, adding on to the many that already run across Europe, the Middle East, and so many other parts of the world, separating people behind new curtains of hate.

As far as we are concerned, it is primarily a challenge in Europe and for Europe.

We cannot surrender to unjust de facto situations nor to the torment of “endless” wars.

Europe cannot and must not afford to fall prey to precariousness, to being incapable of accomplishing its natural task of assuring peace and stability throughout the continent and in neighbouring regions.

Our own liberty and prosperity would be at stake.

Here as in Paris, in the upcoming fifth edition of the Forum de Paris sur la Paix, we will never have enough initiatives aimed at ambitiously and inclusively promoting integral peace.

We must be capable of heeding the call of distress and the cry for peace forthcoming from men and women throughout the planet and translate them into tangible acts to give force to a common commitment and turn our common hope into reality.