GREETING OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO THE ORGANIZERS OF THE INTERCULTURAL FESTIVAL OF GIÀVERA DEL MONTELLO

Please note that this document is an unofficial translation and is provided for reference only.

[…] This way of seeing the reality of migration does not mean hiding or ignoring
the difficulties and problems. Who better than you knows them and can testify to
them? And therefore it is important that your experiences are also made
available to good politics , to help those with government responsibilities at
local, national and international level to make choices that always know how to
combine healthy realism with respect for people’s dignity.. I saw one of the
paintings you brought, about the torture that migrants suffer when those
traffickers take them. And this happens today. We can’t close our eyes! The
dignity of people. This is why your Festival, like other similar initiatives in Italy
and in various countries, should not be reduced to a folkloric event or a
gathering of idealists. No, I also say this as a food for thought and verification
for yourselves. We can ask ourselves, after thirty years: has our experience been
able, and to what extent, to affect the level of political choices, dialoguing with
institutions and civil society? It seems important to me to ask ourselves this
question.
Dear friends, above all I thank the Lord with you for the journey he has given
you to make in recent years through the experience of the Festival. I wish you to
move forward with an ever-renewed spirit. I propose that you take Abraham as a
model, whom God called to leave and who always remained a migrant
throughout his life. Abraham is a “father” that as Christians we share with Jews
and Muslims, but he is a figure in which all men and women can recognize
themselves who conceive life as a journey in search of the promised land, a land
of freedom and peace, where live together as brothers. […]