Italian table without walls

On 26 September in Rome on Via della Conciliazione the Italian table without walls was set up, promoted by Focsiv in agreement with Masci and the collaboration of the Municipality 1 of the City of Rome. An initiative now in its 3rd edition born from the need to give a strong and clear yet simple signal, like sharing the same table and a piece of bread.

The success of the Roman initiative in October 2018 and the subsequent Italian one in June 2019, the latter originating from the numerous requests for membership received from different cities and associations, a total of 26 with the involvement of five thousand people and 350 different entities, had led the same co-organizers to believe that, also in the light of the effects of the political decisions of the various European countries on migration, reception and integration, it was necessary to create a series of Tables to be organized in Rome and in other Italian cities and European. 

This event should have taken place on 6 June, but in April 2020, due to the situation caused by the pandemic, it convinced the co-organizers to postpone the Tavolata to a more suitable time: 26 September. In the light of what we have experienced in recent months, in that surreal suspension of the world in its daily running in business and hugs, in that need to find the courage of a new imagination of the possible, as indicated by the Pontiff, and in having to feel part of a wider community: the human one without foreclosures and exclusions. The Tavolata becomes the symbol of that boat, evoked from the churchyard of St. Peter by Pope Francis last March 27, on which we all find ourselves rowing together, all brothers.

The message of the Tavolata without walls is a powerful metaphor: it is the boat on which all of humanity is seated, from which it governs itself to find a route that leads it back to a more cohesive and inclusive community, which reminds us that only radical brotherhood and human saves us from the storm of the society of selfishness. On that boat we started and, at the same time, pilots.

All aiming to move away from our anxiety of omnipotence and possession and to abandon the logic of a society of waste, but bringing us back to the route that helps us "to understand that we are all part of a story greater than us and we can look with hope at the future, if we really take care of each other as brothers ”. As Pope Francis has indicated to us and as he will show us in his next Encyclical "Brothers all".

Gianfranco Cattai
NP october 2020