Open letter from the bishop of Cassano and vice-president of the CEI
Criticism for the differentiated autonomy but also for the violence seen in some demonstrations against students and for the age-old problem of the lack of work especially in the South: this is what we read in the open letter to the candidates in the European elections by Msgr. Francesco Savino, bishop of Cassano all’Ionio and vice-president of the CEI.
“This letter of mine to you is a political act”, begins the bishop, in the sense of a “full assumption of responsibility by those who, like me, have always been convinced, as Don Lorenzo Milani would have said, that ‘the problem of others is the same to mine, getting out of it together is politics, getting out of it alone is avarice’”.
The bishop says he is “sided with the people who are struggling, on the side of those who have been deprived of all dignity and a traveling companion of the least, of those forced into silence, of the excommunicated, of the failures, of the many who live on the margins” .
“I look at these communities of ours in which, despite my limitations and fragilities, I try to do my best” and “I cannot help but think of those who no longer know how to look at the sky, tired of so many broken promises, resigned to the many trains leaving with children who will never return, overwhelmed by the oppression of malfeasance, cunning, criminal violence and ‘ndrangheta vulgarity”.
As for the political debate, “I cannot help but note a cultural and in some ways also ethical decline”.
“I observe with attention and with growing concern the embarrassing daily succession of news regarding politicians colluding with mafiosi, the multiplication of cases of corruption now seen by public opinion as a sort of custom, something to which we have sadly become accustomed, which does not outrage more”.
“And let me finally convey to you my pain and sadness for those increasingly numerous scenes of violence which in recent times are characterizing the many squares in which our young people everywhere in Italy, and not only, demonstrate their dissent and their opposition to every form of discrimination, war, aggression against the environment”.
The bishop, quoting Father Ernesto Balducci, therefore asks the candidates: “take sole care that people’s consciences do not become subordinate to you. Instead, avoid certain clientelistic politics that fuels the desire to depend, to hand yourself over to someone, to free yourself from the responsibility of choosing, and instead commit yourself to a politics that gives back to every person the desire to be free”.
