The project of European unity may be “fully realized only by augmenting brotherhood as a political category”. “ A Europe united in brotherhood cannot but place its own experience and its own resources at the service of the demand for justice, cooperation and peace that is being made by the poorest areas of the world”. The declaration is made by the participants at the Conference “1000 cities for Europe” held in Innsbruck (Austria) on 10 and 11 November. It was attended by 1,200 delegates from 28 European countries, including some 700 mayors and 300 youth. The conference promoted by the president of the Chamber of communes with the collaboration of the Focolari Movement ended with the publication of a “Manifesto for Europe” in which the mayors reaffirm their commitment to be protagonists of the building of the new Europe. “The afflictions and problems that traverse the continent we read in the manifesto – have their deepest and most quotidian impact in the cities, and it is there that they require a first response. It is at the municipal level that individuals can begin to assume their political dimension; it is by starting out from the cities, real training grounds of democracy, that the new demands for participation, responsibility and solidarity can be tackled”. The Union the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, recalled is preparing to welcome new member States, thus embracing over 500 million people and enlarging its confines from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. A model of “union of diversities” is ever more clearly taking shape for Europe, but if that model is to become a reality Prodi added the European Union has “a need for a soul, a shared sentiment that enables us to recognize each other in a common identity and in a common destiny”. Hence the plea made to European politicians by the president of the Focolari Movement, Chiara Lubich: unite together in a “pact of brotherhood”. “To be truly Europeans Lubich said we must succeed in looking at the past with compassion, recognizing the history of our own nation and that of others as shared, as something held in common, and recognizing that what we are today is the result of a common history, of a European destiny that asks to be taken entirely and consciously into our hands”.
