Title: Bread and Power - O pão e o poder

Since 2007, the Literary Competition of the Library of the Arsenal of Hope has been held every year, aimed at the guests of the house. This now-traditional activity serves the important function of enabling forms of communication and expression and making visible the daily life, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and stories of each person who has the courage not to leave the page blank.
This year the theme was “The Hope of Fraternity: Peace, Encounter, Harmony,” inspired by Pope Francis's speech to SERMIG and as a tribute to the Arsenals which, next year, will celebrate important dates—in particular, the Arsenal of Hope, which will turn 30 years old.
On November 15th, we held the awards ceremony, presenting prizes and certificates to the participants. In total, there were 43 participants who wrote and submitted 52 texts. We share here the winning text.

At the corner, where the city strips bare, I saw my fellow traveler. He carried neither titles nor fortunes, but the lightness of one who knows how to share bread. It was a tiny gesture in the face of the immensity of the wars, misery, and hunger surrounding us, but in that encounter were the seed, the hope, and the germ of Fraternity.

There, on the sidewalk, peace was not a concept; it was the silent harmony of bodies that, for an instant, forgot the weight of not having a place to live. Gratitude always appeared in the shining eyes of the elderly and in the small hands of street children. For the homeless, the soup was not just nourishment, but the recovery of a self-esteem stolen by indifference.

I thought of the irony: while life asks us for humanity in every simple gesture, society insists on concentrating value in power. This is the root of the disease, the subtle poison of human envy, the insatiable desire to hold everything in one hand. When strength is concentrated, compassion vanishes.
True purification and the spread of urgent ideas are not found in great theories, but in the practice of sharing. It is in the shared crumb that the fiercest criticism of the system that wants us to be individualists resides.

And that is why I believe that the world’s chronicle still has an open ending. Peace will not come from treaties signed in air-conditioned offices, but from the warmth of a bowl of soup, from the outstretched hand, from bread broken in half. It will come when the hand that reaches for power is the same one that reaches out to support.

Life has taught me that the miracle lies in the everyday: in the anonymous companion who expects nothing in return, except the possibility of being, truly, human.

The Sermig Fraternity in Brazil
NP December 2025