Dialogue and forgiveness

A week of exchange and reflection on the Gospel Beatitude “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”: that was the experience shared by some 70 delegates from 25 countries who participated in the 6th meeting of Mediterranean youth held at Loreto (Italy) until Sunday 9 September, under the auspices of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. The countries represented at the meeting were Croatia, Slovenia, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Egypt, Malta, France, Portugal, Lebanon, Albania, Jordan, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Algeria, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Tunisia, Cyprus, Syria and Italy. The young delegates arrived in Italy on 28 August: given hospitality in the dioceses of the Marche, Romagna, Umbria and Abruzzi, together with their Italian counterparts they converged on the little town of Loreto and there met Pope Benedict XVI in the park of Montorso on 1-2 September. This was followed by three days of pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi. They then returned to Loreto for their meeting. PURIFYING THE MEMORY. “We cannot be free if we don’t forgive those who have done us wrong”, said EFREM MUSUNDI , a youth from Rwanda who survived the massacres that ravaged his country in 1994. Musundi, who was only sixteen at the time, saw his father and grandparents killed in the conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi, and for years lost all trace of other members of his family: his mother, four brothers, two sisters and various cousins. “On the night they killed my father – he recalled – I escaped into the bush, and remained hidden there for a month. At any moment I could have been discovered and killed, and I thought: ‘If they take me I hope they’ll shoot me'”. Musundi now lives in France and works in the movement promoting equity and solidarity in trade. “It’s a way – he explained – of thanking the Lord for what he granted to me, by permitting others to lead a dignified life”. Meanwhile, in Rwanda, the purification of memory is pursuing the path of forgiveness and reconciliation. “Those responsible for the death of my father – he explained – were in prison. My mother asked for their release, and they now work on her farm”. Musundi is in fact convinced that “hope for a better future, a future in which there would be no more war”, can only be based on the recognition “of the errors and tragedies” of the past, and especially on forgiveness. DIALOGUE IN THE BALKANS. Purifying the memory is also an urgent task in Europe, especially in the Balkans. “Dialogue is the main means to overcome the sufferings that Kosovo has experienced in recent times”, insist LAURA D’ESTE and LUCIA PINO , who both lived for one year in Kosovo as aid workers for Italian Caritas. “Apparently – declare the two volunteers – everyone today denies there are problems of living together, but confidentially both the Albanians and the Serbs confess they remain fearful of living together”. It’s a situation supported on “a strange balance”, where the presence of the UN international peacekeeping force, while on the one hand it “does not favour the overcoming of what happened in the past”, on the other is necessary because, if an external control were lacking, “there’s a risk that the Serbs would become even more discriminatory than they are now, or, worse, that fires that have not been altogether extinguished would be rekindled anew”. But “dialogue is possible – say the two aid workers -, especially by starting out from the young”. Hopes in the young are also expressed by RITA ZADRIMA , delegate of Montenegro , who points out that “reconciliation cannot be immediate: too little time has yet elapsed”. “A generational change will be necessary”, she suggests, though underlining “the importance of dialogue and encounter, especially in a social context like that of Montenegro in which different ethnic groups and religions interact”. NEED NOT TO FORGET ONE’S OWN ORIGINS. Not closing one’s eyes to what lies outside one’s own national frontiers is a need felt by all the youth who met in Loreto. “Meetings of this type serve to establish a dialogue and construct a world of peace”, says AXELLE LATOURETTE from France . “On the basis of our common Christian faith the exchange of experiences helps us to grow”. However “recognizing our differences enriches, so long as we do not forget our own identity and our own history”. ENRIQUE HERNÁNDEZ , of Spain , speaks of the difficulty of communicating the faith to all those young people – the majority in his country – who are indifferent “not only to the Catholic Church, but to religion altogether”. To them Hernández intends to bear witness to his faith: a witness expressed in “concrete gestures, and not in words, because only if they see in us people intent on changing the world, sustained by faith and inspired by love, will they begin to ask questions”.