“Strengthening relations with the bishops and directors of pastoral offices” and “promoting the project ‘Agora of Mediterranean youth'”: that’s the objective of the visit to the Balkan countries being made by a delegation of the Youth Pastoral Service of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), of the CEI Office for Cooperation between the Churches and of the John Paul II Centre in Loreto. The delegation touched down in Albania on 1st March. “The Agora was born from the vocation ‘of a bridge’ that Loreto and the Holy House have”, explains Father Paolo Giulietti, head of the CEI Service for Youth Pastoral. “Each year youth arrive in Loreto from 24 countries of the Mediterranean area thanks to this initiative, and now we feel the need to make the links created during these meetings more stable and effective”. During its ten-day visit the Italian delegation will stop off in Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting local youth and local Church authorities. “The Balkan reality is variegated – continues Giulietti -, and is characterised by the cohabitation of Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim traditions, with contexts where Catholics sometimes form the majority and others where they only form a tiny minority”. It is therefore “a laboratory of multicultural experience, with which we feel close kinship, both geographical and in terms of twinning between the Churches”.
