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A signal also for Europe is being sent out from Rome. We don’t know whether it is already possible to call it historic, but undoubtedly the visit of a Jewish delegation to the mosque and the invitation to repeat this visit soon in the synagogue seem like a light suddenly lit up in the darkness of misunderstanding, rejection and mistrust. That light was lit up by the will for peace and dialogue which, in repudiating every form of fundamentalism, belongs to both religions in their deployment in history in fidelity to the one God. It is also a gesture full of hope for Europe, in which uncertainties and fears are motivating cultural and political reactions of rejection and suspicion, while it is becoming ever more clear that realism, in the face of diversity, is made of very different material. From the “eternal city”, from an open and welcoming land cultivated with passion and respect for others by the Catholicism led by the successor of Peter, have come gestures and words that indicate to the old Europe, and to the world as a whole, the roads that lead to a future of peace and justice. Those roads, clearly, are uphill all the way. What happened at the mosque and will happen soon we hope at the synagogue of Rome are also the stages of an obstacle course, full of pitfalls but also full of hope and the will to vanquish evil. “Salam laykum”, “Shalòm ‘alekhem”: the first greetings, the first handshake between the representatives in Rome of the sons of two brothers. “It’s time to look each other in the face, speak to each other, and open our doors to each other” says Rabbi Di Segni. We confirm together “the commitment to God and the sacredness of life” says Abdelah Redouane, general secretary of the Islamic cultural centre of Italy. And then, not by chance, an appeal to journalists: “Be the bearers of this message of cordiality and dialogue. Our two cultures meet together to renew bonds of dialogue in which we have never ceased to believe”. It’s a task to be assumed with greater sense of responsibility by those in the information business who seek more what it is that divides and destroys than what it is that unites and constructs. An age-old professional rule that the meeting at the mosque in Rome also forcefully underlines, not least in view of the consequences of hasty and biased information. The day was summed up by the meeting of Benedict XVI with the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak. It was another signal of the will of the three great religions to contribute to the construction of a world of peace and justice. A common message that calls to mind the theme of transcendence, truth and God. Europe is one of its first recipients. The “secularism” of the old continent cannot consider what happened in Rome yesterday as a “private religious fact” between Jews, Muslims and Christians. If she really wants to say something significant to the world on the great questions of life, human rights, and the dignity of peoples, Europe must re-think her own “secularism” if she is not to be sidelined from the hopes of a humanity ever more conscious that a future of peace and justice is built in the meeting between faith and reason. On Monday, 13 March 2006, this message too was sent out from Rome, from its mosque, from its synagogue and from its basilica.
