Word: sante
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some call it the United Nations in Trastevere. When Andrea Riccardi founded the Community of Sant'Egidio with a circle of high school friends in Rome in 1968, he did not have big plans. The group would pray together and aid the poor and in that way help improve the human condition at least a tiny bit. "The periphery of Rome was like a Third World city," Riccardi recalls...
Forty years later, Riccardi, 58, has made his presence felt a lot farther than in one small corner of a big city. The Community of Sant'Egidio is now a global family of more than 50,000 volunteers in 73 countries, dedicated to charity, evangelizing and peacemaking. Funded by contributions and subscriptions, the group has been called upon to function as arbiter and conciliator in a score of major peace negotiations in the Middle East, the Balkans, Latin America, Africa and Asia. "We're not dreamers," Riccardi says. "We need to convince the people that peace is the best situation...
Riccardi began demonstrating the power of that simple idea in the early 1980s, when Sant'Egidio was asked by various factions to help broker an end to the bloody religious strife in Lebanon. That work was followed in the early '90s by a greater--and more lasting--accomplishment, as the group helped cool tempers and negotiate deals in a civil war in Mozambique...
...Italy. Some viewed the Pope's absence as a slap to those working for inter-faith dialogue, both inside and outside the Catholic Church. On Sunday, however, Benedict will be center stage at the most lavish, and well-attended, inter-religious ceremony of his papacy, organized by the same Sant'Egidio community that helped launch Assisi. What has changed? Why is Benedict marking 21 years since "the spirit of Assisi" was uncorked, after skipping out on the 20th anniversary...
...very encouraging that the Pope has decided to come," says Mario Marazziti, a spokesman for the Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio, the Rome-based group behind both the Assisi and Naples events. "At the same time we know this is a different Pope than John Paul, who touched so many with the charisma of his person. This is a theologian-Pope, who governs with his word." But more and more, Benedict also seems to understand that gestures - and even just showing up - are sometimes the best way to be heard...