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For a More Human World

By Giorgio Vittadini*

The title of this year’s Meeting makes one think of a curious and interesting development, through various cycles centering on economic and social topics. The contemplation of beauty calls forth desire. And it is desire that enables us to recognize the truth present in reality, to make it the key for the feeling of things, that causes new forms of life to be built for man, and that teaches him to build a more just and human societas. The formula: desire, works, and politics–the terms used by Fr Giussani in Assago in 1987, speaking to members of the Christian Democratic party (at the time solidly in power in Italy) are the heart of the matter.

Therefore, at the Meeting we shall talk about the welfare society and the state. This cycle will deal with the concept of “More society, less state” vis-à-vis the institutions of the Italian Second Republic. Marcello Pera, President of the Senate, will be asked what the aesthetic experience of the love of beauty, right, and truth has to do with a sense of the State, a theme that is usually much more closely bound to the ethical sphere and respect for formal, often cold, rules. A workshop on welfare will follow, with prominent figures.

Similarly, the workshop on schools will bring us up to date on school parity, telling us about the situation of the schools in the majority of developed countries, with the research of Professors Kilpatrick and Glenn. Letizia Moratti, Italian Minister of Education, will answer students’ questions about the university. Health Minister Sirchia, along with representatives of the association called “Medicina e Persona,” will talk about health care, from state-centered systems to free choice. General Mori (Director of SISDE), Pollari (Director of SISMI), and Volontè (head of a parliamentary group of members of the former Christian Democratic party) will speak on a very timely subject: security from terrorist attacks and other forms of violence.

In our conception, the world of the economy, strictly speaking, usually bound to positions concerned with maximizing productivity, is born of an ideal passion of man. Unfortunately, we, too, very often, treat this subject according to criteria of arid competence, neutral technique, and the logic of power. To combat this tendency, the cycle “From the heart to work: a check-up of the economy” will deal with topics that concern daily life: the suppliers of energy, gas, and water; youth and agriculture; new technologies, bearers of information; pollution and electrical cars.

Last but not least is a meeting with Santo Versace and other famous designers, not so much on fashion as on the defense of excellence and beauty in this sector which is so central to the expression of Italian genius.

While everyone talks about the confrontation between global and no-global, in order to decide who is mistaken and who is not, while the most anachronistic clichés and Third-Worldisms are surfacing again, the Meeting cannot avoid addressing the theme of globalization, one that is dear to us, because we are not a no-global movement, but a universal one, just as the Church is universal. We are aware that only education to the religious sense, culminating in Christian faith, can bring development, peace, research, and the construction of authentic freedoms and propose something that is truly alternative. Globalization is not a priori negative in all its forms. Industrial outsourcing and the birth of small businesses in the Third World, respecting the person and human dignity, will be approached in a meeting with the participation of Magariños, General Director of UNIDO, the UN agency for small businesses. Next, we shall talk about the fight against underdevelopment, with Msgr Martin, Nuncio of the Holy See to Geneva.

We shall also discuss the Middle East with the artisans from Bethlehem, and education in Lebanon with UN representative De Mistura and the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

To conclude, the institutional seal will be put on by Berlusconi and Prodi with European heads of government talking about the Europe of the peoples, which has been the cradle of beauty joined with usefulness, reality, and the concrete, and now risks more and more falling prey to ideologies that lead to abstraction with a loss of identity and thus have an uncertain economic outlook.

And there is much more: Muccioli, Emilia Cesana’s In-presa, the New York firefighters… Anyone who thinks that the contemplation of beauty can lead to ecstatic, dreamy, sentimental, clericalizing men is making a mistake. And he is served right.

* President of the Company of Works