This event will be a moment of reflection and sharing, where we will discuss the outcomes of the meaningful dialogues we have facilitated. Join us to celebrate our achievements and the connections made throughout this journey.

Register now to participate in the evening session: https://forms.office.com/e/DbXiW5EZR2

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Get to know more about the project here!

L'articolo DialogUE Project Final Event proviene da New Humanity.

Even though they were just small signs, they are so significant as to consider Dialop’s path as a sort of well-respected special observer on the part of the Catholic Church. The initiative – which began in 2014 – to foster dialogue between Christians and Marxists – experienced a significant moment on Wednesday, 10 January with a private audience with Pope Francis. It was meant to be a ten-minute greeting which would already have been a valuable achievement but Bergoglio spent 40 minutes with the delegation (eight Catholics and seven Marxists).

‘In a world divided by war and polarisation,’ the Pope began, ‘don’t back down, don’t give up, don’t stop dreaming of a better world’, because ‘it has been precisely the great dreams of freedom and equality that have produced breakthroughs and progress’. And he recommended “three attitudes”. First, ‘Have the courage to break the mould to open up, in dialogue, to new paths. Let us cultivate a spirit of encounter and listening with an open heart, excluding noone at a political, social and religious level’. Then, ‘Care for the weak. A civilisation can be ‘measured’ by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Politics that is truly at the service of people cannot allow itself to be dictated by finance and market mechanisms’. Finally, ‘Legality. What we have said so far implies a commitment to fight the scourge of corruption, abuse of power and illegality’. And in the final greeting: ‘I wish you wisdom and courage’.

Another significant sign was the presence of Card. José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, at the opening of the Conference on Integral Ecology, held at the Sophia University Institute from 11 to 13 January. The event was part of the DialogUE Project, funded by the European Union, and had as the main theme ‘For a social and ecological transformation’. Cardinal Tolentino’s speech focused on ‘Integral Ecology in Pope Francis’.

The three-day conference at the Sophia Institute, with more than 40 talks by academics and researchers from various disciplines, brought together economic and political, philosophical and theological, scientific and humanistic aspects from different cultural visions in an exemplary exercise in dialogue. Re-reading Pope Francis’ document ‘Laudato si’ made it possible to highlight, and this is what emerged from the reflection, “the all too weak countermeasures to the climate crisis undertaken so far and the clear failure of important economic-political efforts to avoid global climate collapse”. “There is an urgent need to act quickly”, this appeal was reiterated, but it is indispensable to “start by being aware of a handicap in man’s vision even before the ecological one”.

A further indication of the importance attributed to the Dialop experience lies in the presence of the Secretary General of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, Spanish priest Manuel Barrios Prieto, on each of the 3 days of the conference.  He spoke at the concluding phase of the conference. Great attention, therefore, was paid to Dialop’s commitment to formulating a transversal social ethical programme as the fruit of dialogue between the Social Thought of the Catholic Church and Marxist Social Critique – ethics enlightened by the vision of integral ecology proposed by Pope Bergoglio.

Ten years ago, neither Walter Baier, a Marxist politician and current president of the European Left, nor Franz Kronreif, an architect and member of the Focolare Movement, both from Austria, who both initiated Dialop would ever have imagined the results of this 2024 stage. ‘The meeting with Pope Francis,’ Baier remarked, ‘opens a new chapter between the Left in Europe and the Catholic Church. And what has matured at Sophia marks the development of that dialogue because it showed how rich the knowledge we are able to mobilise is’. A particular perspective has also opened up for Kronreif: ‘Based on the path we have been able to take and the experience we are gaining, we can expand to other dialogues or integrate other subjects into our dialogue to safeguard the people, nature, justice and peace’.

Paolo Lòriga

This article was first published on focolare.org. 

L'articolo Dialop: “Courage and commitment to dream of a better world”. proviene da New Humanity.

As part of the EU-funded DialogUE project, the annual “Together for Europe” meeting also addressed issues aimed at developing advice and recommendations for EU social policies. Professor Philip McDonagh, a former Irish diplomat and director of the “Center for Religion, Human Values and International Relations” at Dublin City University (DCU) stressed the importance of Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and emphasized the contribution of Churches in public debate.  

You can now read a complete interview with prof. McDonagh. 

 What does Article 17 say and why is it important? 

Article 17 provides for a structured dialogue between the European institutions, churches and faith communities. It’s unique in the world because it’s an open, transparent dialogue on the great questions of society. 

From the point of view of the European Union, the great benefit is that this is a channel for dialogue, on the deep questions of society. A German jurist, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, spent many decades developing his analysis that political societies, democracies, depend on cultural conditions. You can’t pass a law saying “We will trust one another.” Trust has to be earned. It has to be created by initiatives and by education. So Article 17 is a perfect means of creating these conditions on which a good democracy depends. It’s very good for the churches and it’s very good for public authorities. The temptation for churches and faith communities is to be a little bit lost in their own internal world and Article 17 is a way out, it generates new forms of leadership within the churches. For public authorities, instead, the great danger is to be on a treadmill, from week to week, with no time to think about the high level values and Article 17 is an antidote to that. So it’s very good for both sides.  

You mentioned transparent dialogue on great questions of society. How Christian communities and the European Union can work together?   

Well, one very obvious answer is that Christian communities have social capitals. They have schools, hospitals, charities, which help people who may otherwise not be looked after very well. But I think that’s the easy answer. The more important answer is that the churches go back to the first principles and ask, what is life in society about? We have a bigger language. For example: hope. What is hope? What does it mean to live in hope, to act in hope? So that’s a philosophical contribution to the public debate.

If our high-level values would include compassion, concern, solidarity, respect for pluralism… how do you translate that into day-to-day policies when it comes to the cost of housing or renting a house for young people, for example? We tried to connect the big language of the churches to day-to-day issues, which is not easy, but it’s a much needed contribution. Of course, we’re not talking about a theocracy, we’re not talking about any church having the last word or making the final decision. But churches can provoke the right kinds of discussion. 

Some argue that, historically, Europe was funded by Christians values and the loss of it is one of the causes of today’s crisis. What’s your view on this? 

Well, I’m not so comfortable by saying that Europe is based on Christian values. There are so many terrible chapters in history that we have to be very careful about saying that. One of the learnings of the churches in the last century is that we actually share values with people from other backgrounds, we can always find a common ground, the same structural questions appear in all societies. So as Christians, we would have to have the deepest respect for Gandhi, for example, in India, who was very respectful of Christianity and was not a Christian. We have to talk the language of human values, we have to be very humble about what has gone wrong in our own history. We have to work with all people of goodwill, to work out in a new way, in new circumstances, what the key human values really are. That is the task where the churches can make a huge contribution.  

If you’re a Christian, what does the revelation in Christ bring that is new? That is not in other traditions? So that is a key question. I don’t think, though, it’s the level of mainstream values because you can usually arrive at those values at different routes. It’s perhaps more about the forgiveness of sins, the possibility of new beginnings and the sense that injustice never has the last word. It’s a faith in the ultimate truth of peace, of hope.   

How do you see the future of Europe? 

I think we have to travel in hope. I don’t think Schuman or the great foundational thinkers of Europe had a final blueprint or a single model. They wanted to develop new layers of solidarity, and not only within the present borders of the European Union.  

In the world as it is today, we have to think very seriously about multilateralism. We have to think of the world as having shared problems. So whatever direction we take in the European Union, it has to be seen as positive by the global community as a whole. And that really requires a lot of attention. What would the global South think of our ambitions for Europe?  

We have a standard of living in the European Union, which most of the Middle East or Africa would love to have. So what are our responsibilities to those countries from which migration happens towards Europe? How are we going to have peace among all the peoples of Europe? I don’t see how we can have a concept of Europe that excludes Russia. Today is very important that the European Union have a dialogue with China, a dialogue based on values. Both of us subscribed to the SDG’s (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). That is already a large area of shared values. In this dialogue, the churches can play an important part. The churches are present in almost every country in the world and that is a very important resource when it comes to intercultural dialogue. 

But also there are other countries who run the risk of being excluded. Turkey has been an applicant join the European Union for decades. Can we have a vision of Europe that does not include all the countries of the Balkans? So perhaps part of the solution is to keep developing the European Framework of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), as well as developing the further integration of the European Union and enlarging its boundaries. So you could have two projects taking place at once, which will, hopefully, ultimately reinforce one another. 

Know more about the DialogUE Project. 

L'articolo “What is the role of Christian communities in Europe today?”, Interview with prof. Philip McDonagh  proviene da New Humanity.