I would like to express three things that I feel in my heart about the meeting between the Movement and His Holiness Pope Benedict.
1. The invitation I was given to take part in this gesture was very significant to me. It was an invitation to share in the life of dear people, of a dear person. Whoever knows Arabic culture will perhaps be even better able to understand what it means for me to have been invited to share in such an important gesture in the life of friends.
2. I was thrilled to see and listen to the Pope in person; he is a man with a spirit as pure as a child’s. If I may make a comparison, it was just like what I felt when I first saw Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, a work that I had long loved but only known through photographs and reproductions in books.
3. I realized that consciousness lives in relationships. It was the encounter which I had that enables me to understand. Being there in Rome was another step in that identification that enables me to re-read my whole history and my culture with new eyes.