«In a time marked by conflicts and divisions, we feel a strong need to say together that peace is not a distant utopia, but a daily responsibility, to be cultivated in relationships, gestures and everyday choices».
With this beautiful phrase, the coordination of Agesci (Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts Association) of Milan invited all the groups in the area to mobilize for a peace march on Thinking Day, the day of remembrance or thought, the day in which the founder of scouting, General Robert Baden-Powell, was born in 1857 and, having retired from the army, gave life to a movement that placed one of its cornerstones in peace.
Around 1,000 children, teenagers, their bosses, parents, but also friends and ordinary citizens joined the colorful procession. They started from Piazza Elsa Morante (CityLife) to arrive, after two hours of walking, up to Garden of the Righteous, a green area where trees are planted as a tribute and in memory of those who saved human lives during genocides and mass murders, as well as other crimes against humanity committed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and also by those who safeguarded human dignity during the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Communism.
The initiative received ithe patronage of the Municipality of Milanto support the educational and civic value of the proposed path. Housing councilor Fabio Bottero was present for the Municipality and councilor Serenella Calderara for District 8. While the Milanese Church had as its representative the auxiliary bishop Monsignor Giuseppe Vegezzi, who shared his experience in the tormented Holy Land.
The march took place two days before the four-year anniversary of the official start of the war in Ukraine, but the demonstration did not want to refer to any war in particular, appealing instead to the rejection of armed conflict and peace as universal values to be lived even in everyday life. The participants were invited to bring with them a sign of peace that they felt was significant to their experience: not as a fulfillment, but as an opportunity to give voice to what they already experience. A gesture, a word, a symbol, a story that tells how, in everyday life, everyone tries to build fairer and more attentive relationships. And the kids, with the joy and enthusiasm of doing something beautiful together, they created banners and signs with slogans under the banner of brotherhood and unity; flags of all the States were distributed; a long ribbon made up of many ribbons tied together was passed from hand to hand.
This march was only the final point of a journey that began in the various branches since September, because the culture of peace is built every day.
