With the President of the Republic and the Pope, Trieste is preparing for the 50th Social Week of Catholics in Italy

Mattarella opens the 50th Week dedicated to democratic participation on July 3; Francis closes the 7th, with a homily and Angelus in Piazza Unità

TRIESTE – The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, will open the 50th Social Week of Catholics in Italy, entitled “At the heart of democracy. Participating between history and future”. Event that will end on Sunday 7 July with the arrival of Pope Francis in the regional capital.

This was made known by the bishop of Trieste, Enrico Trevisi, and the archbishop of Catania, Luigi Renna, who presented today in the Julian Episcopal Seminary the program of the 5 days which will have the main events in the Trieste Congress Center in Porto Vecchio, where they are Over 900 delegates are expected, including around eighty bishopsand in various city squares.

MISSION OF DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION

Born in 1907, and with a pause of twenty years between the 70s and 90s, the Social Week, explains Renna, “has returned to constitute a moment of reflection for Catholics who are in Italy, on the challenges that are continually present in new ways. The last great challenge that we want to face with thought and discernment is that of participation in democratic life – he continues -. In a historical time in which we all see how absenteeism is a characteristic of many citizens, we want to return to saying the importance of being an Italian and European people who become participants and protagonists of their history”.

The idea is the papal encyclical ‘Fratelli tutti’, underlines the archbishop of Catania, “which speaks of a democracy to be continually regenerated”hence the opening contribution of the President of the Republic, “who thus comes to give his word, very important for us, as a man who reveals the greatness and beauty of our Constitution, which is the ‘Magna Carta’ of our democracy ”.

THE SQUARES OF DEMOCRACY

The events of the Social Week will be divided into the central days biblical reflections and plenary assembly in the morning at the convention center, and in around fifteen themed ‘democracy squares’ in the afternoons which will be held in the city: school, sport, ecological conversion, health, families, on Thursday 4 July; suburbs, digital democracy, local institutions, prison, civil economy, Fridays; citizenship, preparing for politics, peace under construction, institutions, equality practices, Europe of the new generations, on Saturday 6 July. Among the speakers, numerous university professors, while the squares will be animated by experts and protagonists of the individual thematic areas. In the evenings, shows and musicwhich will see the participation, among others, of Riccardo Cocciante, Roberto Vecchioni, Malika Ayane, Simone Cristicchi.

THE POPE’S PROGRAM

On Sunday, Trevisi explains, the Pope will arrive by helicopter to the conference center at 8.30am, welcomed by the civil and religious authorities and by Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi. After the speech to the delegates of the Social Week, he will meet a representation of ecumenical people, of the academic world on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the University of Trieste, and of migrants and disabled people. Then he will move by car (open) to Piazza Unità where at 10.30 he will hold the homily and the Angelus together with the bishops who arrived in Trieste. At 12.30 he will take off by helicopter from Molo Audace towards the Vatican.