ROMA (ITALPRESS) – “Santity, I wish to give you my thanks for the message that you wanted to address me when you are preparing for your first apostolic journey to Turkey and Lebanon. The pilgrimage to the ancient Nicea, on the occasion of the thousand and seventeenth anniversary of the first ecumenical Council of history, and the other significant meetings on the agenda arouse feelings of hope and trust in all those who share their commitment to respect for human dignity and the fundamental right to religious freedom. On these assumptions of ecumenism and the dialogue between faiths, the prospects for peaceful coexistence among the peoples are solid foundations.” The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, writes this in the message sent to Pope Leo XIV.
“In the course of your journey you will visit lands where the Church has a very ancient and still lively presence, where, along the centuries, different peoples and cultures have met and compared in a process of mutual enrichment. I am sure that wherever your testimony will comfort women and men of good will, who repudiate violence and oppression, working every day to silence arms and prevail the reasons for dialogue, the search for the common good.”.
“Interreligious harmony and cultural pluralism – he adds – have long formed fundamental traits of civilizations built along the shores of the Mediterranean, even though we are now preparing to remember it. It is time that the analyte to peace and stability, precisely of all peoples, is translated into concrete initiatives. Your presence in Turkey and Lebanon will certainly reinvigorate the reasons for human unity and brotherhood. With these wishes, I wish to address to Your Holiness the most fervent wishes for this pastoral mission, while renewing, at the same time, the expressions of my deep esteem and consideration”.
-Photo IPA Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
