Hope from below

We really have complicated times, repeatedly. They generate anguish and breathlessness, with the drum beating. In an unthinkable and disconcerting twist. We have not yet definitively emerged from the terrible two-year period, in which we have been hunted down and hit by Covid, which is now the war, which has broken out in the heart of the old continent, to displace us for the situations of inhumanity that weapons have caused. An atrocious and frightening war, with the invasion of Ukraine irresponsibly decided by Russia, with clashes, victims, destruction, suffering, tears, refugees, nuclear risks.

We have fallen into a minefield, indeed into a tragic swamp in which values, rights, dignity of persons and peoples sink, leaving only the force of bombs and tanks to dictate the law on the field. A discomfort that weighs and worries. Pope Francis said of his "torn heart", thinking of the pain of those targeted by missiles and machine guns. By asking to "stop the massacre" that has started, invoking a ceasefire and respecting the humanitarian corridors (as first steps, to rebuild an arduous and demanding peace).

It is incredible this return to Europe as a whole - made up of peoples in the same boat, from the Atlantic to the Urals - which returned to fire after the Second World War, after the raids and grim tensions of the Cold War and after the atrocious events of Srebrenica and Sarajevo. And now, with the story that brings us to the brink of the abyss, it's up to Jorge Bergoglio to call upon believers and non-believers, for a day of fasting and prayer, wondering about the heavy darkness that was generated by the violence of the tanks. But his voice struggled to break through where the war can stop.

The use of brute and brutal force, as well as deadly of bombs is impressive. Thus people's lives blow up and the fundamentals of coexistence among peoples are crushed. But you can't give up on the worst. The mobilization of consciences on peace to be firmly believed, to the end, is also in our hands, from below. And on this we have to put our all into it. The welcome of refugees and the generous solidarity that has been set in motion to go against the victims of the war are strong reminders to the "rulers of the peoples" who cannot take these inhuman shortcuts, on which blood and death flow. The culture of fraternity (which does not know fences, barriers, walls, discrimination) is only to be made to grow. Woe to back down.


Corrado Avagnina
NP April 2022