The periphery, at the center

"Christians and Muslims are brothers." These words of Francis have become one of the key phrases of an apostolic journey to Africa that has once again succeeded in completely transforming geography and placing the periphery at the center of the world. A message with a spiritual core and also a concrete provocation on one of the most complex aspects of the change in which we are immersed: the relationship between Christians and Muslims. A relationship of kinship, of fraternity, for Francis; but one that betrays the terrorism of Islamist matrix that has bloodied Europe. It makes us wonder why even brothers kill each other when they do not recognize each other as children of the same father. The French Revolution was clothed in the fraternity as of an effective flag, but in the name of it so many brothers ended up on the guillotine.

The fraternity that leads to peace so often invoked in African lands by Pope Francis is, on the contrary, completely different. It is born of recognizing in the other, one who is good for me because he brings me something good. Exactly the opposite of the conviction that arms the jihadists, who are driven to the search for a violent utopia: they imagine a world free of all diversity, because they let live only those who are identical to their idea of how to live. It does not admit otherness. Perhaps because of it, if one is not born a brother, one could become one. This is what those who educate at various levels testify: one becomes a brother or sister, one discovers that there is something good for me in the one in front of me, through a patient and daring education, which is not synonymous with "instruction". If learning to read and do mathematics is fundamental, truly useful education is integral: it provides for the care of the person who asks to be accompanied to discover the pleasure of living in fullness, to embark on a journey with others beyond the confines of the tribe, to enter into relationships, to trust and to take risks.