NPEYES- Photos and texts University of Dialogue

Publish date 30-09-2024

by redazione Unidialogo

The goodness that breaks down walls and disarms hearts, justice as the path to peace, commitment to building and planning become the only keys to dialogue and fueling hope.

Dialogue is not a slogan, nor an empty word. It is a very concrete path to overcome hatred and build peace. It means recognizing your own face in the other and agreeing to sit around a table, ready to change some ideas. Sermig has understood this throughout its history, which began in the 1960s, a difficult period of profound protest, of wall against wall. The experience of a group of young friends who immediately decided to grow through continuous comparison with credible teachers and adults.

Thus, the University of Dialogue was born within the Arsenal of Peace, a permanent training space that focuses on the discussion on the great themes of the present time from a perspective of hope. With a very simple objective: to offer a horizon of thought, but with an accessible style that is close to the people, outside of any elitist dimension.
A journey of search for the meaning of life that engages everyone: ordinary people, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, politicians, artists... called to restore themselves to build a more just world.


That world for which two great "masters" of Sermig to whom the University is dedicated suffered and fought, Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, a strong and clear witness to the drama of imprisonment and Giorgio Ceragioli, an enlightened university professor, who he taught us to open ourselves to the global world and to use technology at the service of men, especially the poor and marginalized.

The University, inaugurated by John Paul II on 31 January 2004 in the Vatican, is structured into thematic sessions, with monthly meetings attended by representatives of every field (from politics to economics, from culture to spirituality), in direct dialogue with the young people of the Arsenale della Pace.


"My greatest desire is to convey to you my message of Love, in serenity and truth, in forgiveness and reconciliation".
François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan
(Vietnamese cardinal long persecuted by the communist regime, in the photo with Ernesto Olivero).


"One of our greatest possibilities for welcoming the future lies in the acceptance of new things and people."
Giorgio Ceragioli
(professor of architectural technology at the Polytechnic of Turin – in the sacristy of the Archbishopric of Turin in 1980 with Ernesto Olivero and the young people of Sermig he met Prof. Franco Bolgiani, close collaborator of Cardinal Michele Pellegrino).



The main university of Rome took the name of “La Sapienza”.
But where does wisdom come from if not from the continuous and rigorous exercise of research? And what stimulates and promotes research if not doubt? Those who do not doubt and are satisfied with what they know, or what they think they know, will never arrive at wisdom, at becoming those wise men to whom the new Sermig university is dedicated. But what is the ultimate wisdom reached by the man who knows the limits of his own reason, if not the Socratic knowledge of not knowing?
Norberto Bobbio

The University of Dialogue is a significant Sermig initiative.
Initially it was given the name University of Doubt, modified to give greater weight to the desire to create an opportunity for discussion and bring new ideas. The answer to doubt comes from the heart of those who have faith. The Lord is capable of defeating evil in every moment of history. The solution is love, the goodness that disarms. Those who seek truth and wisdom will always have as their guiding criterion the idea that light cancels out darkness.
Dom Luciano Mendes

What is meant by prophecy of peacemakers?
I would reserve the word prophets precisely for those people, for those gestures, for those interventions that stand out and shake, that move and also disturb, sometimes even disturb, but then make progress towards the Gospel of peace. The prophets of peace are a great gift for the Church, and therefore I also think of them as a prophecy of peace to you of Sermig who must work in an incisive and not just ordinary way for peace.
Carlo Maria Martini



"It makes no sense to say: let's remember so that it never happens again. This is pure rhetoric. Instead, we must try to understand why it happened and each of us must work hard not to repeat it."
Antonia Arslan
(Italian-Armenian writer, famous for her book La masseria delle larks in which she describes the tragedy
of the Armenian genocide of the early twentieth century).

"The drug cartels think absolutely in economic terms: only criminal demand generates criminal supply. As long as there is demand, you can do anything: lock down state borders, carry out checks, search, but it won't be enough. The narcos will find always other ways to get the drugs through."
Lucia Capuzzi
(journalist and correspondent for the foreign page of Avvenire, expert on Latin America).

"Of all our dreams, God may have that of being able to be with a person, being able to meet him deeply, pour his heart into the heart of the other, welcome the heart of the other".
Cesare Falletti
(Cistercian monk founder of the Piedmontese monastery of Pra 'd Mill).

"What is dialogue? The word says it. It is a logos that through a dia, that is, between, enters the hearts of others. It is the only instrument that God also has to be able to work in the world".
Francesco Occhetta
(Jesuit, journalist and writer).

 



"Blessed are the dissatisfied because they will become treasure seekers. I believe that the thirst for the infinite starts from here, it starts from a dissatisfaction, from a hunger that is inside me, from something that I lack, from something that I feel 'absence. We move through life following the call of a hunger, of an absence.'
Ermes Ronchi
(servant father, author of numerous books on spirituality).

Fragility as a meeting ground, to experience closeness and build concrete paths of brotherhood. The writer Daniele Mencarelli knows something about it: adolescence and youth marked by addictions, then a journey of rebirth and new awareness. Among his best-known works, Everything asks for salvation in which he told of the compulsory health treatment he experienced when he was twenty, in the summer of 1994.

"Mine is nothing more than a job. In life I simply want to be Fabrizio. And today, after so many years, I can say that yes, I have been lucky. The beauty of my job is that it forces you to always question yourself. I would like a television capable not of proposing models, but of taking them from reality, because real life is much better than it seems."
Fabrizio Frizzi
(beloved and unforgotten TV presenter).

"The First World War was truly the first total war in which states and not only authoritarian, militaristic ones like Germany or Austria-Hungary or Russia, but also Western democracies decide that winning the war is the only thing that matters, that absolutely does not matter how much we spend and how many dead, wounded, maimed we will have, because we win this war at any cost".
Alessandro Barbero
(historian and writer).



CONVERT THE MAFIAS
"I often say that I have more respect for a Camorra member than for a corrupt white collar worker.
It's perhaps an excessive provocation, but I don't use it casually. Because all in all, evil is much easier to deal with when you see it from the front, when you recognize it, when it has very specific characteristics."
Raffaele Cantone
(magistrate)

 

Each meeting is also broadcast live on the Sermig website (www.sermig.org/diretta) and on the Sermig social channels (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram). Articles, photos and videos of the University of Dialogue meetings can also be found on www.unidialogo.sermig.org

 

 

 



INSIDE THE NEWS
"Telling stories is a responsibility.
That of the journalist is a necessary mission, to make one's eyes and ears available to those who for various reasons cannot see or hear. As Pope Francis says, we need to illuminate the suburbs.
Some stories and photographs can make a difference, through the power of words and images."
Giammarco Sicuro
(rai war correspondent)

 

THE BEST IS YET TO COME
"Life is an expectation, it's a wait for something. And even now that I'm old, I believe like Frank Sinatra that the best is yet to come. I believe that fantastic things can still happen to me, with the conviction that I deserve them".
Pupi Avati
(director)



THE SCANDAL OF THE UNPREDICTABLE
"The unforeseeable cannot be eliminated. And therefore you must prepare with seriousness and sincerity to navigate the human adventure with a slightly broader gaze than that relating to your projects, your dreams or your programs".
Silvano Petrosino
(philosopher)

WITH THE LOOK OF GOD
"Faith is a vision of the world that is not ours, it is an attempt to look at the world as, especially through the scriptures, God would look at it. So it is a bit like putting on the glasses of God who continues to scrutinize, watch and follow and accompany the story with love, with mercy, with passion".
Claudio Monge
(Dominican theologian)

THE DIVIDEND OF FRATERNITY
“There are social experiments that demonstrate that those who take care of the good of others first obtain their own good by reciprocity. Reciprocity is not exchange, it is not a question of quantity: the value is in the intention. The quid pro quo applies to private goods, but another logic applies to relational goods. Only in this way will we build more fraternal societies.
Stefano Zamagni
(economist)



THE CHALLENGES OF THE NETWORK
“On the internet there are some “traps” into which it is easy to fall: a mechanism of anxiety, a fever of immediacy. And again, the idea of ​​the profile, the idea of ​​the person as an aggregate of data... We are no longer individuals, we are profiles, but the more we are profiles the more we are manipulable and influenceable".
Chiara Giaccardi
(sociologist)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES
"Technology always has a possible double use: the same tool can be used as a weapon or as a work tool. The question is how to make AI a useful tool for democracy and communication. One idea is to put a sort of plaque to identify the product of a machine".
Paolo Benanti
(president of the AI ​​Commission for Information)

PASSION EDUCATES
"The greatest vocation on the face of the earth is that of the mother, because she participates more than any other in the creation of life. One step below there are the teachers, because they have the
task of taking that life that mothers have given and putting it on the road. This gives
a joy, a fullness that almost no other job gives."
Alessandro D'Avenia
(teacher and writer)

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