“The whole substance of his words aimed at extinguishing enmities and laying the foundations of new peace pacts”. A plaque in the courtyard of Palazzo Accursio, seat of the Municipality of Bologna, reports a quote from the chronicles of Thomas of Split dedicated to the preaching of Saint Francis of Assisi on the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna on 15 August 1222.
Extinguishing enmity and building bridges of peace is the mission of Francis’ followers today present in places where Christians are a minority. This is the case of the Holy Land and the Gulf region. They discussed the prospects of this mission in the context of XVI Franciscan Festivaltaking place right in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, Fra’ Stefano Luca and Father Francesco Patton. Stefano Luca, a Capuchin minor friar from the Province of Lombardy, is currently responsible for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue for the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia and provides his service at the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Father Patton, belonging to the Province of Saint Anthony of the Friars Minor, has been Custos of the Holy Land since 2016, based in Jerusalem.
Current events burn. The confirmation of the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah under Israeli bombs in Beirut came a few minutes before the meeting. Francesco Patton, who at this moment bitterly notes the absence of a desire for peace on both sides, says: “The way out of the situation we find ourselves in is the one indicated by Rachel Goldberg Polin, the young man’s mother Hersh, one of the Jewish hostages seized by Hamas and then killed: we Jews must learn to understand their suffering and they, the Palestinians, must begin to understand ours. And so we must accept each other. Because turning in on ourselves in suffering destroys us, leads us to an accumulation of anger which then explodes and devastates. If we transform suffering into empathy and compassion then we begin to lay the first bricks for reconciliation, coexistence and peace. And perhaps this is also the reason why our Lord freely chose to climb the cross and experience atrocious suffering to take upon himself the suffering of all humanity. Unfortunately I don’t see many ready to follow this path, but I believe that we Christians must learn from this mother because at this moment we too risk being infected by hatred, by resentment, by the desire for revenge, by a series of negative things that do not produce the future.”
Stefano Luca, who published “Theology of differences” for Terra Santa Edizioni, an essay dedicated to the new perspectives for the Franciscan mission in dialogue with Islam, recounts his experience which began in September 2023 in Abu Dhabi, where the government of United Arab Emirates created the House of the Abrahamic Family, a place where a Catholic church, a mosque and a synagogue stand side by side.
“We are,” explains Fra’ Stefano Luca, “in the cultural district of Abu Dhabi, near the Louvre museum and where four other museums are being built. We are at the center of this cultural district to promote the culture of dialogue and to be a bridge between all cultures. We are not a museum, but a place where each religious denomination exercises its worship in these three buildings of the same dimensions, 30 by 30 metres. Then there is the forum that connects the three houses of worship where the communities hold meetings, workshops and other activities”. Fra’ Luca recalls that the House of the Abrahamic Family “is a first concrete reception of the document signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam al-Tayyeb. Without a reference to that ‘Document on human brotherhood for world peace and common coexistence’ we would lose our compass”.
Fra’ Luca, who works in a Vicariate where one and a half million Catholics live, mainly from Asia, recalls that “we have many common elements. But we need to recognize that we are different. Differences do not make us distant, but they are that beauty that makes us enrich each other. The brother’s difference helps me to consider the profound questions of my faith.”
Patton, who takes stock of his experience as Custos in a book interview with the journalist Roberto Cetera premiered in Bologna (“Like a pilgrimage. My days in the Holy Land”, Terra Santa Edizioni)recalls the particular condition of the Franciscans in the Holy Land, a minority among Muslims and Jews. He explains that this imposes a difficult balance, leads to “measuring one’s words”, but always demonstrating openness and respect towards others.
In a situation like the current conflict, Patton sees an opportunity for coexistence in schools. He gives the example of a school in Bethlehem which in 2019 drew up a decalogue for coexistence and the example of the “Magnificat” music school with a majority of Jewish teachers and a majority of Palestinian students. “The school”, he recalls, “was put to the test by the events of 7 October 2023, but we managed to keep the war out of the classrooms and this seems to me to be a great result”. As Patton says in his upcoming book, this too was the stage of “a pilgrimage that educated me to look to the future with confidence and hope despite all appearances to the contrary.”
