Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - On the occasion of the 40 years of the Community of St Egidio, Fides put a few questions to its founder, Professor Andrea Riccardi.
The S. Egidio Community was born forty years ago: what was the social and ecclesial context of the time and what reasons prompted its foundation?
The Community was formed on 7 February in 1968 by a group of high school students in Rome, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and during the youth uprising in which it appeared that everything had to change. The beginning and the basis of the S. Egidio Community was guided by reading the Gospel and this has continued all through these forty years with a desire to live the Gospel in our lives. The Community is a reality of lay Catholics living in the world dedicated to showing solidarity to the poor. S. Egidio Community started its work in the outskirts of the city of Rome, among poor people living in hovels, in a Rome which still had pockets of third world conditions. For the Church it was a very special time, in a full Vatican II atmosphere which inspired renewal, to rediscover of the primacy of the Word of God, to live as the People of God active in the world.
S. Egidio Community was born and grew under the pontificates of Pope Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II and today Benedict XVI. What memories have you of each of these Pontiffs? What did they mean to the Community?
I never met Pope Paul VI personally. I came to understand him above all through his writings which left a profound mark on the Church such as Evangelii nuntiandi and Populorum progressio, and his apostolic journeys to other continents. In the years of his pontificate our relations were mainly with his Vicar for the diocese of Rome Cardinal Ugo Poletti, who accompanied the first steps of our Community with paternal affection, and entrusted us with the church of S. Egidio, from which our community took its name. Cardinal Poletti was an important figure for Rome, he promoted among other things, a Diocesan Meeting in February 1974, on the responsibilities of Catholics with regard to the need to promote charity and justice in the diocese of Rome.
Then came the brief pontificate of John Paul I, another Conclave and the election of John Paul II, who immediately set out to visit the parishes of his diocese of Rome. We met him on 3 December 1978, on the occasion of his first parish visit in the Garbatella district: He stopped, we told him what we were doing and he encouraged us and asked “Are you in Rome? Then come and see me!”. We were deeply impressed by his simple manner. That was the beginning of 26 years of a relationship of paternal encouragement, execution of his prophetic intuition - the interreligious prayer meeting for peace in Assisi 1986 -. I remember his first visit to S. Egidio in 1979, when we were still a very small reality and young in age. The Pope understood, sustained and loved us, as a great Bishop. He said something wonderful about us: “you have no limit, except charity”. Even in maturity we are always sons and daughters : this is how we feel our relationship with Benedict XVI. With him there is a long story to live which has just begun with profound agreement on the themes of peace and ecumenism, evangelisation in Europe and in Africa: I will never forget the joy of his presence at our interreligious Meeting in Naples last October, when he encouraged us to continue along the path of encounter and dialogue with religions and cultures.
Mission is part of the life of the Church and all the more of the life of Church Movements. What are the characteristics of the S. Egidio Community mission?
When we started our horizon was that of this city of Rome, but precisely this bond with the city and its Bishop, the Pope, gave us a sense of universality. Our mission, from the start, has been to turn to those who have lost touch with the Church: young people in our de-Christianised Europe, the poor in the outskirts who were losing their religious roots because of emigration and the difficulties of life…in the popular districts of Rome we developed a passion for the Gospel which led our Community to the frontiers of the world. S. Egidio lives the communication of the Gospel as a personal encounter. In our history we have never sent “missionaries” to other countries: our communities in the world were founded on encounters with men and women who shared the “spirit” of S. Egidio and wished to live it in their own situation. The sense of mission is sharing the Word of God, communicating the joy of having encountered Jesus in our poor brothers and sisters with the testimony that it is possible to live the Gospel in every situation, living exceptionally the ordinary things of every day.
In how many countries is S. Egidio Community present? What have been your most significant experiences outside of Europe?
Today Sant’Egidio is present in 70 countries with about 50.000 people. More than half of them in the south of the world, mainly in Africa. Some of our Communities live in difficult situations as Christians in Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia. The members of our Communities are local people with the same life and problems as those around them but in the awareness that “no one is too poor to help someone in need”. This is the example of our Communities in Africa working to assist street children or prison inmates.
Certainly these 40 years have opened many international scenarios to us, involving is in the suffering of people in many countries. In these years we have promoted peace, for example in Mozambique, with a peace agreement signed here at Sant’Egidio, on 4 October 1992, after 16 years of bloody civil war. It is possible to change the world.
Sant’Egidio lives everywhere the spirituality of gratuitousness, and today this becomes testimony: there is not only the market. In its activity Sant’Egidio relies on the participation of thousands of volunteers. Intervention free of ideological patterns, at times undertaken with "feeble means" like the service of young Africans who help the poor people around them with programmes which intervene in places out of reach for international institutions.
The question of our experience as a Community is complex: every story of the resurrection of a poor man or woman, every meeting with a young person who finds faith and hope for the future, every man condemned to death who receives a letter from a friend, every desperate old person who is visited, every child born healthy from a mother with HIV, all this is important for us, even if it happens in some forgotten corner of the earth. The outskirts become the centre of the world when the Gospel bears its fruits, through the heart and hands of a brother or sister of Sant’Egidio. (P. L. R.) (Agenzia Fides 4/2/2008; righe 80, parole 1.183)
