Thank you, dear colleagues of China Committee on Religion and Peace, for your kind invitation to this important webinar and for your longstanding friendship towards our Italian Chapter of Religions for Peace!
Thank you also for your sign of solidarity when you sent us 20000 surgical masks to be distributed to the people in need for the prevention of Covid-19 infection spreading.
Nice to meet you, dear all participants to this webinar!
This pandemic, which from the first months of 2020 has been spreading all over the world, represents a tremendous trauma for the whole world population already suffering for the crisis due to the change of epoch in a context of difficult and even turbulent international relationships.
It was an experience of limit and of vulnerability somehow for everyone: we experimented that the present time and the future are not directly and entirely in our hands, despite the important achievements of the science, the modern medicine, the technology in general and the computer technology.
It’s not so easy to accept own personal and collective fragility so as it not easy to remain calm when facing the risk that economies and complex production systems could collapse due to the need of lockdown rules in order to stem the pandemic.
In this context of suffering and confusion, and also let’s say desperation, it becomes very important the role of the religions in feeding hope and promoting solidarity.
Indeed we have seen how in these last months the support of religious leaders and believers of different religious traditions contributed a lot in relieving suffering consequent to pandemic, through prayer, human closeness, spiritual comfort, medical and nursing assistance, education to respect of rules for prevention of infection spreading.
The religions also underlined the importance of consciousness of interdependence of events and phenomena, made evident to all through the experience of pandemic; this consciousness leads us to understand the need of facing together, and not divided or even in competition, this severe threat to the health of all humanity not only in the strictly physical sense. It’s impossible, indeed, to face the pandemic as single community or single nation, due to its global impact.
Let’s remind us that peace is not only the end of a conflict or the absence of war and we can only conceive it in a positive way as an action of justice, in other words as the promotion and realization of a shared well-being.
All religions share as the moral fundament of their teaching the so called Golden Rule,which essentially consists in caring for others in the same way we desire the others care for us; it means that we shouldn’t be indifferent to the suffering of the others, but,conversely, we should commit ourselves in order to relieve this suffering.
Religions can transmit these positive values to our civil societies in a credible and effective way when they act in cooperation and not singularly or even in competition and self-affirmation for propagandistic purposes. Their credibility is strong when they give a clear example of common action for a shared well-being including all the people, with a special attention to weaker and more vulnerable persons.
The multi-religious efforts and cooperation are essential for the promotion of the shared well-being through : a) the contribution to the building of peaceful, just and inclusive societies; b) the promotion of freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion; c) multireligious cooperation and global partnership; d) promotion of gender equality; e) protection of the earth through a sustainable development; ) Interreligious education.
The mission of Religions for Peace is exactly that of serving the promotion of multi-religious dialogue and cooperation on the objectives mentioned above.
Thank you, dear friends, for your attention!
DOTT. LUIGI DE SALVIA
Presidente di Religions for Peace Italia
President of Religions for Peace Europe
( National Bodies )
Via di Porta Castello 33, 00193 Roma
+393332731245
luigidesalvia@icloud.com
