Hong Kong (Francis Wong), 17 October 2008:
Christian groups can sometimes broker peace in situations of conflict where traditional international diplomacy is not working, says the president of a Roman Catholic-founded community that helped achieve an end to a long-running civil war in Mozambique.
"The mission of the Church is to promote reconciliation and communion in this fragmented world," Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Italian-based Community of Sant' Egidio, told Ecumenical News International on 14 October during a visit to Hong Kong.
The Sant' Egidio community is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It began in 1968 at the initiative of Andrea Riccardi, who gathered a group of high school students like himself to find ways of putting the Christian gospel into practice. Since then, the community has grown into a worldwide movement with about 50 000 members, who belong to groups in more than 70 countries.
Reconciliation brings peace
"We have the power to reconcile in Christian faith. Reconciliation brings peace," Impagliazzo said. "This peace is not something that can be achieved by international diplomacy alone."
The Sant' Egidio Community is famous for its efforts in political mediation, its HIV/AIDS work in Africa, in campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment, and in promoting inter-religious dialogue and ecumenism.
The community helped broker a peace accord to bring an end in 1992 to a long-running civil war in the southern African nation of Mozambique, in which about one million people had been killed. The community has also been active in seeking to promote reconciliation in places such as Lebanon, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Burundi, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Somalia and Sudan.
"When the Sant' Egidio community started to mediate in Mozambique, we first only sent humanitarian resources there but it did not help the situation," Impagliazzo said. After that, the community began to plant "seeds of reconciliation" in local communities.
A commitment to heal
"The world is divided nowadays. There are divisions between the North and the South, the rich and the poor," said Impagliazzo. "We should commit ourselves to heal these divisions, both locally and globally."
Impagliazzo made his remarks during a visit to the Sant' Egidio community in Hong Kong, and on his way to Beijing for an academic conference on social science and religions.
He told ENI that his community had to be careful not to dilute its identity. "We are a Christian community," he said. "We will not turn to a political group."
The Sant' Egidio community was awarded a UNESCO peace prize in 1999. In the same year, it also received the Niwano Peace Prize, awarded by the Tokyo-based Niwano Peace Foundation, a Buddhist-influenced group.
