Pope Francis explains the figure of the priest at an important congress in RomeCardinal Marc OuelletThe real cause of abuse is not celibacy, but lack of self-control and affective imbalance".At the initiative of the Italian Bishops' Conference, a meeting of bishops and mayors of Mediterranean coastal towns is being held in Florence. Pope Francis is also expected to visit next Sunday. This is the second initiative of its kind, personally led by Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian Bishops' Conference. The first took place exactly two years ago, just before the outbreak of the pandemic, in Bari, also in the presence of the Pope.
The bishops of no less than 20 countries bordering the "mare nostrum" participated in the meeting to reflect on how to make it more and more a "frontier of peace", and today this concern of the local Churches becomes even more urgent and necessary in the face of the winds of war blowing over Europe in these very weeks.
The Florence meeting, like that of Bari, was born from the example of a happy intuition of the Venerable Giorgio La Pira, mayor of the Renaissance city and constituent father, who in the 1950s and 1960s gave life to the so-called "Mediterranean talks" as a strategic opportunity to achieve world peace. And he suggested an analogy between the time of Jesus and the contemporary era, between the environment in which the Messiah moved and that in which the peoples of the Mediterranean lived then - but also today: a heterogeneous context of culture and beliefs, multiform, not exempt from economic, religious and political conflicts and, therefore, in need of unity and peace.
To the bishops gathered in the Basilica of St. Nicholas of Bari, Pope Francis reiterated that, precisely because of its conformation, the Mediterranean "obliges the cultures and peoples bordering it to a constant proximity", in the awareness that "only by living in harmony can they enjoy the opportunities that this region offers from the point of view of resources, the beauty of the territory and the different human traditions".
If the ultimate goal of every human society remains peace," the Pontiff explained on that occasion, "war is rather the failure of every human and divine project. But there can be no peace without justice, which is trampled underfoot whenever "the needs of the people are ignored" or "partisan economic interests are placed above the rights of individuals and the community", or people are treated "as if they were things".
The Pope's program for Sunday includes, after greeting civil and religious authorities, including the mayors of Athens, Jerusalem and Istanbul, a meeting with refugee and displaced families and Holy Mass in the Basilica of the Holy Cross.
"As Christian communities, we have the moral duty and missionary task of fostering and promoting, with faith and courage, new international balances based, first of all, on the defense and valorization of the human person, as well as on an effective and concrete solidarity" - said Cardinal Bassetti in his opening address to the Meeting of Bishops of the Mediterranean. He then recalled: "Our brothers and sisters crushed by wars, hunger, climate change, some of whom are freezing to death on the borders of Europe or drowning in the Mediterranean, are the first and privileged recipients of the proclamation of the Gospel".
The meeting will be attended by 58 bishops - among them the Archbishop of Barcelona and president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Juan José Omella, and the auxiliary bishop of Madrid, José Cobo Cano - and 65 mayors, among them those of Granada, Seville and Valencia.
