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We all horrified at the terrorist attacks to the United States. We have been glued to the television and paralysed with horror at the images of death and destruction that were so terrible to seem unreal. We are angry, shocked and frightened by this absurd toll of women, men and children that hit the city of New York, the symbol of the western world to which we Italians, Europeans, belong. |
We work every day with the peoples of the South of the world, where 10 million children die of hunger every year; where almost a billion of school-aged youth cannot receive education; where the access to drinking water, doctors and medicines is a dream for over two billion people,… and the list doesn't stop here.
No TV News records these deaths, there is no CNN that broadcasts them live, they never "make news". But we are horrified in the same way. Let us stop with the rhetoric and with making comparisons. Human life is holy no matter the nationality nor the culture. We were right to lit millions of candles all over the world to mourn the deaths in New York… but what about the many candles we did not lit in all these years?
We absolutely and totally condemn terrorism, but the same goes for any war. It is only a instrument of further death and division among peoples and cultures. Which war can ever guarantee "infinite justice"? Which war can ever solve the problem of a peaceful and civilised co-existence of peoples?
We ask today more than ever before a global view of the events happening to each one of us, even if they occur at the other side of the Globe. We look at the World and we realise the economic and social unbalances are generating a too large and dangerous gap between the North and the South. And we are the first ones to be blamed for this vacuum.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday the 11th of September the world stopped, but the Stock Exchange did not…
We must reflect on what happens in the world, by questioning ourselves and exchanging our ideas. Let us be guided by the Word; may the Holy Spirit enlighten us. We need more intimacy with Jesus Christ to be able to decide what saves us and what doesn't. By trusting Him, we will be able to take sides and decide whether "His Kingdom" may "come" and whether "it will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven". Or, if we prefer, we can build our certainties upon missile defence screens and dollars.
