The reasons for hope

The Fourth National Congress of the National Congress ended on Friday with a message to all the local Churches in Italy. Held in Verona from 16 to 20 October, the Congress had as its theme “Witnesses of the Risen Jesus, Hope of the world”. Both in its preparation and in its holding, it was structured round five “spheres” – affective life, work and celebration, human fragility, tradition and citizenship – so as to “give historic form – it was explained – to Christian witness in particularly sensitive or significant places of life and so define a human identity open to Christian hope”. Another feature of the event, both in its preparation and celebration, was the choice – by each regional Bishops’ Conference – of 16 witnesses who, in the course of the twentieth century, had communicated the Gospel both by word and by deed, offering reasons for hope. At the Congress, which was attended by 2,700 delegates – including 270 guests representing the European episcopates and other continental areas – there was also a meeting with exponents of European culture: Margaret S. Archer, professor of sociology at the University of Warwick (Coventry), Michel Camdessus, president of the Semaines sociales de France, and Ján Fige?, EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism. Two words formed a kind of leitmotif in all the interventions: “hope” and “witness”. THE MESSAGE AND THE PLEDGE. The “deep joy” of the delegates of the Italian dioceses who took part in the Congress emerged from the message issued at its end: “We take with us the desire to revive, for ourselves and for everyone, the reasons for hope. In the meeting with the Risen Lord we have relived the wonder, trepidation and joy of the first disciples”. And it is precisely on this “experience” – says the message – that the pledge “not to shirk the great challenges of our time is based: the promotion of life, of the dignity of each person and of the value of the family founded on matrimony; attention to the sense of confusion and loss that we feel all about us and within us; dialogue between religions and cultures; search for holiness as the supreme measure of Christian life; communion and co-responsibility in the Christian community; and the need for our Churches to move decisively towards essential and evangelically transparent models and lifestyles”. THE POPE’S WORDS. This pledge was confirmed by the words that BENEDICT XVI – who visited Verona on 19 October – addressed to the Congress delegates. In Italy – said the Pope – there is “a great and needlessly hidden longing for hope”, given that the Church “is a reality that is very much alive, and that preserves a grassroots presence in the midst of people of every age and condition”. The Italian Church and Catholics are therefore called “to grasp this great opportunity, and above all to be conscious of it”. The Pope appealed to the Italian Church to “give positive and convincing responses to the hopes and questions of our people: if we are able to do so, the Church in Italy would render a great service not only to this Nation, but also to Europe and to the world, because the threat of secularism is present everywhere and equally universal is the need for a faith experienced in relation to the challenges of our time”. THE RESULTS OF THE CONGRESS. The challenges that await the Italian Church after the National Congress were addressed by Cardinal CAMILLO RUINI , President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, in his concluding address, in which he traced the journey made by the Italian Church from the last National Congress (Palermo, 1995) to the present day. “The concrete results of this Congress and of the whole preparatory process that led up to it will consist – said the cardinal – in what we in the Italian Church are able to live and bear witness to in the years ahead, trying in the first place to be humble in following in the footsteps of the Lord”. Ruini then added: this Congress “must help our communities to bear witness to the Risen Jesus within a social and cultural, national and international context that is changing very rapidly, while at the same time the situation inside the Church is also being renewed”. Among the factors that particularly appeal to the Church the cardinal specified the “religious, social and political revival of Islam”: “This great process affects us closely from a religious, and not just social, economic and political point of view, also because, in the general context of the great migratory phenomena of our time, the Islamic presence in Europe, and in Italy too, is strong…” For his part, Cardinal DIONIGI TETTAMANZI , who chaired the preparatory Committee of the Congress, spoke, in his opening address, of “a triple process” underway in the Italian Church. “The first process that has occurred – said Cardinal Tettamanzi – is that of an ever stronger and clearer maturation of the conscience of the Church on her evangelising mission… A second process that has occurred and is still underway in our Churches is that of a maturation of the awareness and practice of ecclesial communion… Finally we come to the heart of the Congress [the third process]: to the witness of the Risen Jesus, a gift to and a task for all Christians and a question we have to face everyday”.