In the "piazza" of the future” “

United Europe depends on the new generations. Some 70 youth representing the various countries of the Mediterranean area attended the Forum of Mediterranean youth, held at the John Paul II Centre in Loreto (Italy) from 1-13 September. The countries of the Mediterranean are so close to each other geographically, but at the same time so far removed, divided by political, religious and cultural barriers. Most of the participants came from Europe to get to know each other and debate together the issues of peace, poverty, globalization and social disadvantage, and also to lay the foundations, by dialogue and Christian sharing, for a better future. The “piazza” of Loreto welcomed participants from Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, but also from the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan area; nations that have recently made their entry into the European Union such as Slovenia, and others that not only remain outside but are still scarred by decades of war, such as Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo. KOSOVO AND ALBANIA: “OVERCOMING HATRED”. “This meeting in Loreto – says KASTRIOT, a 25-year-old Kossovar – is a unique experience. The theme to which year’s Forum is devoted, meekness, is one that I think is decidedly topical and important today, especially for our generation and for the majority of young people who represent countries that have long been theatres of conflict”. “It’s the first time I’m participating”, says 21-year-old ARDIAN from Albania, who says he has found a fundamental support in the mission in Albania of a community of sisters, the Maestre Pie of Montefiascone (Italy). Of the war he has a vague but no less traumatic memory: “people were shooting all over the place, it was an inferno”, he recalls. “It’s important – he concludes – to submit the problem of violence to so young a public, because the attempt to overcome the hatred that now afflicts humanity must start out from the young. All the more so in a period in which I realise that is especially the very young who tend to be more violent than in the past”. PORTUGAL AND MALTA: “FOR A BETTER WORLD”. ALBERTO MANUEL, 26-year-old Portuguese, knows the younger generations very well, seeing that he teaches religion to children aged from 11 to 13. To these adolescents, however, it’s not so difficult to bring the word of Christ; “all you need to do is use the right language, more in tune with young people today. Sensibility and faith must also be stimulated”. MANUEL ANTONIO, 25 years old, arrived together with him in Loreto: “This experience will always remain impressed in my heart because in a period so dramatic for the whole world it gives me the right strength to go forwards”. Like him many other young people found a precious occasion for “re-charging” at the meeting. “Even just by participating in this meeting we young people can contribute to a better world”, says 20-year-old MARIELLA from Malta. “Getting to know contemporaries of other cultures, and recognising that we share the same hopes and ideals, leads me to discover that I am not a solitary idealist”. FRANCE AND TURKEY: WITH A THOUGHT FOR IRAQ. Hope beats strong in the hearts of these young people. But for some, it was very difficult to experience the meeting in Loreto with complete optimism, even within the “city of Mary”. ISABELLE, a 23-year-old French girl from Nice, cannot but think of her compatriots taken hostage by Iraqi guerrillas: “It’s a means of sowing terror. My country is responding with demonstrations in which Islamic immigrants are also participating. This is a very positive sign that demonstrates that the peaceful co-existence of different peoples within the same state is possible. With my work I have to do with immigrants every day – adds Isabelle, who is a social worker in a state enterprise –; I think that most of them are well integrated in our country. Integration between different religions and cultures is possible, France is demonstrating that. The problems arise when extremism gains the upper hand”. Another country in which religious diversities risk causing strong social unrest is Turkey, as 20-year-old OMAR MARIO explains: “In my country there are some 1,500 Catholics out of some three million inhabitants. Catholics and Christians are mainly concentrated in the northern area, the one closest to Europe, while Muslims prevail in the south. Turkey is as if divided in two”. He has some experience of this himself: like all Turks, he has the religion to which he belongs stamped on his driving licence: “It’s a fact that counts a great deal in interpersonal relations”.