Six days on bread and water

At the Arsenale della Pace from 20 to 26 October 1986, Sermig is experiencing a special week, the “fasting week”. The starting point is the meeting on the 27th in Assisi where Pope John Paul II will go to pray for peace together with representatives of all the world’s religions. A week of bread and water to experience first-hand what it means to lack food, to be freer to listen and dialogue with everyone, believers and non-believers, to better understand the value of peace…
We have invited personalities from the world of politics, culture, religion, belonging to every orientation, to come and give us “lessons in peace” and to fast with us. Among the guests are Benigno Zaccagnini, Alessandro Natta, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez de Esquivel, the mayor of Bethlehem and many others.

Those who have lived this week intensely with us have been able to grasp the profound meaning of being together to reflect on the meaning of the presence of peace in their own personal reality. All together, after the “peace lesson” and the debate that followed, we meet in the room set up as a “dining room”. While the bread is being distributed, everyone introduces themselves and says hello, and if they want, they add a reflection or a prayer.

It is a special bread that is embodied in a special situation, because it is donated by the prisoners.
Eleven of them are on special leave to participate in an evening: «We do not deny our emotion in participating in this event, also because, even if we are only eleven, on our shoulders weighs the duty and responsibility of representing all our comrades who, even if they are prisoners, are still men».

By sharing it, there is no longer any possibility of escape in the world of abstraction. Also concrete is the “restitution” bag that passes from hand to hand, recalling the needs of the poor. We discovered in those few days – but many for our hunger! – the value of essentiality, the importance of responding with active calm and love to the anger that instinctively arises in the face of profound injustices, such as the very serious ones denounced by Dom Marcello Carvalheira, bishop of Guarabira in the Brazilian North East, or by Benny Nato, representative of the South African Congress Party that fights against Apartheid…

We listened with emotion to the wise words of Zaccagnini: «It is a very beautiful thing that what was an arsenal of war has become a haven of peace, and I would also say a school of peace. I say this not because weapons are the primary cause of war, it is not only weapons that kill peace; after all, the first murder was probably committed with a club, or with a stick... Because weapons do not shoot by themselves, they are only a tool.
It is from the heart of man that war is born and it is in the heart of man that peace is sown».

We felt the need for comparison, for dialogue with those who think differently; the serenity that comes from having seen firsthand that the dynamics of peace lies in being a piece of bread that everyone can eat. Hunger, were we saying? Yes, it was a bit hard, but let's not exaggerate: we could choose to be content with a few pieces of bread and, final concession, an apple, but many, too many people in the world cannot choose: fasting from food, freedom, justice, thought, is imposed and that's it. And not just for a week. No one felt like a hero. No one felt like a nobody. Everyone felt a bit more themselves, more embodied in reality, with the desire to become peaceful and peacemaking men. Protagonists of a peace to be nourished and made to grow.

In the photo: Turin, October 1986, from left the mayor of Boves Piergiorgio Peano, Benigno Zaccagnini, Ernesto Olivero and Guido Bodrato

Edited by the Editorial Staff
NP December 2024