"The time for a new, fruitful dialogue between religions and societies is really ripe, especially for the European ones. Religions are aware of being a minority, conscious of their weakness as well as of the fact they are not the owners of the truth, but that they look for it, as do societies". With these words, Jérome Vignon, president of the Social Weeks of France (Ssf), summarised to SIR the conclusions of the 83rd year of the historical initiative that ended in Lyons yesterday afternoon. Taking his cue from the subject, "Religions, a hope or a threat for our societies?", Vignon said he believes that "nowadays there is not religion on one side and society on the other; we are religious in the society we belong to". However, we must not neglect the problems of the current societies, "which are broken up, which lose their unity and are affected by fear. And fear encourages the fundamentalist element in religions which causes them to break up". According to the president of the Ssf, "the religious feeling makes us think and act in the certainty that we are not the repositories of the truth but that we pursue it through contacts with the other brothers with whom we move along the way to the truth". At the end of the Week, the subject and the date of the next one, the 84th one, was announced: it will be held in Paris (Villepinte) from November 20th to 22nd about "New forms of solidarity”.
