Bologna, 6 May 2024 – To escape the perverse dynamic for which love transforms first into the desire for possession and then into violence it is essential to rediscover the true meaning of the man-woman bond. The indication comes from Cardinal Matteo Zuppi but, by the CEI president’s own admission, the path is all uphill because ethical, cultural and preventive action is needed to rediscover the values of reciprocity, self-giving, shared planning, mutual support, and of the respect that is the basis of a relationship based on true love and not on some distorted surrogate that leads one to think that everything can be bent to one’s will.
“In love the other becomes mine precisely because I don’t own it – explained the archbishop – but because the other is free to love me. In this there is a great evangelical teaching: love unites those who love with those who are loved and this union he is never in a destructive relationship. We must not be afraid to face the effort necessary to rebuild a community that rediscovers the beauty of this relationship and is aware of the fact that an offense against women is always an offense against life.”
Zuppi returned to the topic of femicide during a dialogue with Gino Cecchettin by title What I learned from Giulia, a comparison that anticipated one of the main themes of the next Franciscan festival. In the words that express the suffering of a father who lost his daughter, killed by her ex-boyfriend, also hides the attempt to make sense to a disappearance that cannot have any, to ensure that something is actually done to stop the abuses and murders. “I have the feeling that when you give more rights to a person or a type of person, the others have fewer rights – are the words of Cecchettin –. The fact of having equality between males and females does not mean that males have less freedom and we can apply the same reasoning in many other phases and many other aspects of society. These legacies, however, that reach us in years and years of macho education mean that today these visions are attacked and not shared. Even in language, many expressions such as ‘you are a man’ or ‘don’t be a sissy’ give birth to a child convinced that he is more than a woman. This it must be uprooted and deconstructed and changed the way of thinking.”
The killing of Gulia also struck deeply Pope francescoso much so that the pontiff wanted to have his delivered personally comfort to the Cecchettin family through Cardinal Zuppi.
