French President Emmanuel Macron is in Rome this Sunday for an international meeting on peace organized by Sant’Egidio, a community founded in the 1960s and now recognized for its role as a mediator in conflicts.
It is nicknamed “the little UN of Trastevere”, from the name of the district of Rome where it is installed. Founded in 1968 by young Catholic students imbued with social activism, Sant’Egidio has become over the years an expert in peace negotiations and one of the channels of the “shadow diplomacy” of the Holy See.
It was in 1992 that the community burst onto the international scene with the signing of a peace agreement in Mozambique which put an end to 16 years of civil war between the government and the rebellion. An agreement obtained after two years of talks, conducted informally and discreetly in Rome, under his aegis. Over the past ten years, the “diplomats” of Sant’Egidio have multiplied the intermediaries to offer opportunities for dialogue to countries in difficulty. They have worked in Guinea, Niger, in the Central African RepublicChad and South Sudan.
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Confined to a few dozen people, the diplomacy of Sant’Egidio can above all rely on the presence of its local communities in 73 countries, together with a powerful network. From Burundi to Algeria via Guatemala or Kosovo, many delegations have paraded in the old convent of Trastevere, where the community settled in 1973, while delegations travel regularly to the four corners of the world, in great discretion.
Help for the excluded
But parallel diplomacy is not its primary mission. Born in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Sant’Egidio helps the poor and the excluded, while working for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. She is involved in various fields – with the homeless, the disabled, prisoners, street children… – always with the same goal: “to work for peace”, an action recognized in 1986 by the Vatican. .
She does this first in Rome where she serves meals to the poor, works for the integration of migrants or marginalized people. But also in Africa, Latin America and Asia, where it runs assistance programs and where its contacts in the field allow it to play its role as mediator. Very involved in the reception of refugees, since 2015 it has organized “humanitarian corridors” bringing refugees from Syria, the Horn of Africa and Greece. This initiative earned him the 2019 award from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Its international meetings for peace, born in Assisi in 1986, have since brought together the leaders of the main religions, but also political leaders. After Angela Merkel last year, it was Emmanuel Macron who was invited this year to speak at the opening of the event. He will notably be alongside Italian President Sergio Mattarella. The summit will be closed Tuesday by Pope Francis during a ceremony at the Colosseum.
(With AFP)