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The National Assembly of Pax Christi Italia ended today, Sunday 12 April, a shared space to reread the current, complex and dramatic horizon, marked by the multiplication of wars, the increase in rearmament, the deaths and displaced persons in Lebanon, Sudan, Iran.
“Disarming the heart, to disarm empires” is the common thread that united the various meetings, following Pope Leo’s exhortation last March 3: «Lord of life (…) disarm our hearts from hatred, resentment and indifferenceso that we can become instruments of reconciliation.”
The assembly work opened with the invitation of the president of Pax Christi, Monsignor Giovanni Ricchiuti, to “excommunicate” the US president and all those who provoke or make wars. Also significant is the presence of Don Mattia Ferrari and, with him symbolically, all the migrants crossing the Mediterraneanthe volunteers involved in their rescue and the popular movements that Don Mattia coordinates: a testimony that invites us to accompany and support this work.
How to organize the resistance? Starting from peace education, the national coordinator Antonio De Lellis indicated in his report. Next to this, the many actions for disarmament, for dialogue between Churches and cultures, for information capable of giving voice and face to resistance and movements from below.
Pax Christi Italia supports, with the Italian Peace and Disarmament Network, the popular initiative law proposal for the creation of a Department of Nonviolent and Unarmed Popular Defense and relaunches the request – made for years by the Giovanni XXIII association – to establish a Ministry of Peace.
A clear exhortation also emerges from the Assembly: let’s deal more with Africa! An immense and plural continent, crossed by bloody and forgotten wars, like the one in Sudan, but also by experiences of resistance that open glimmers of hope.
Pax Christi is a landing place – concludes the national coordinator – for those who choose non-violence as a way to build “another possible world” and, at the same time, it is in motion, on a journey, capable of establishing relationships, promoting campaigns and actions, sowing hope.
It emerges from the working groups an invitation to overcome a Church that is “too much a custodian of the truth” and to free ourselves from forms of clerical dependencefollowing the path opened by Pope Francis and continued today by Pope Leo.
