Fr Emanuele, what did this seminar mean?
The seminar was a valuable opportunity for discussion and reflection and a serious response to a situation that is very current, structural and not just an emergency. Two aspects seem to me important to highlight, among the many possible: on the one hand, the crucial need to put people at the centre, overcoming the temptation to simply reason according to mass categories thus promoting a “countercurrent” language; on the other hand, the importance of growing in the awareness that the issue touches all our Salesian houses and concerns all our educative and pastoral proposals, called to promote gospel culture of welcome, encounter and healthy integration.
Dr. Iannini, how would you summarise the experience of these days of exchange with the various Salesian works in the Mediterranean Region?
There is something Fr Nando Capovilla said that particularly impressed me and I think it can sum up these days well: “They call you refugees, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, but please: tell me your names once again, show me your face, tell me your stories, even if I will not sleep because of it. You entered my life as you did my home: with respectful shyness and amazed wonder.... You do not have a home, work or time. But you are not an emergency, an issue, a complex problem. You are children and our brothers and sisters in the world. And I, a son and brother, act as if I were a mother to each of you.”
How can a different approach to the reality of migration be made possible?
We realise that it is time to give voice to the experiences of those who, for a thousand reasons, leave their country in search of a better future and a dream to be realised. The way in which one talks about what happens and how much one experiences causes one to choose to give answers of a certain kind and if something is perceived as real it will be real in its consequences.
Do you think this is possible in our Salesian houses?
In the complexity of the world in which we live, our educative and pastoral communities can be, and in part already are, examples of this conviviality of different cultures, workshops in which those who arrive and those who welcome can create an encounter that will really bring benefit and wealth to everyone
What is the task at the end of this seminar?
Surely we need to grow in working together as a Salesian network and in networking and communication with institutions in different countries: Don Bosco is present and unites the two shores of the Mediterranean. We have the task and responsibility to make this visible.
