Towards the European and administrative elections for the cities of Manfredonia,
San Giovanni Rotondo and Tremiti Islands
Appeal of the Archbishop from the Basilica of San Michele – 08 May 2024
In a month all citizens of the 27 countries of the European Union will be called
to the polls to elect the Parliament of the Union. To this important and democratic
appointment are added for the citizens of three cities of our Archdiocese,
Manfredonia, San Giovanni Rotondo and Tremiti Islands, the elections of the new ones
Local administrations.
I recommend to all voters the responsibility of participation and to
candidates to have the courage to take on the mission of politics as an art of
charity and as a work of social peace by encouraging the construction of healthy models of
economy in our beautiful Gargano area. Therefore, I continue to encourage everyone
citizens, and not just future elected administrators, to always keep LOVE alive
and SERVICE for your community. As? Guarding, supervising and waking up the
easily dormant consciences of communities, both civil and ecclesial, sowing
tirelessly legality, breaking every type of perverse alliance that seeks to
become a system, fighting against the structures of sin that always try to
pollute and take advantage of all the institutions for partisan interests alone.
It is urgent to know how to monitor the subtle deceptions, the different and subtle ways of
abuses of power, on the old and new forms of oppression with which they secretly yes
continues to keep entire sections of society under the yoke, taking advantage of the most fragile and
of the most defenseless. We need to be vigilant so that freedom, promised by the Gospel, is defended
by the Constitution, is not betrayed, bartered or traded for money
expired by promising favors and building a lifestyle that ends with returns
all dependent on the strong powers always in the hands of the few and the same ones.
As Bishop, I continually set myself two commitments towards the Cities and the
Church that have been entrusted to me and I renew them, today, in front of the effigy of the Archangel
which from the top of the mountain watches over the Gargano and protects it from the constant dangers of the
bad:
1. awaken the secular people to civic sense and civil responsibilities. Help him to
overcome the two infirmities of mistrust and fear, which brutalize and
they weigh down relationships and disfigure the faces of citizens and therefore of the Cities themselves.
Gargano cannot allow itself to be put to sleep by mistrust or paralyzed
from fear: the Cities are too beautiful, the Territory is too enchanting, they are
citizens are too sensitive to abandon themselves hostage to mistrust, silence or fear!
2
2. awaken the Christian people to the Gospel, to be sown in the fabric of the many
parish communities and the many forms of Christian-inspired associations that
they enrich the Church that lives in Manfredonia and throughout the Gargano. Only when awake,
attentive to the culture in which we are immersed, we can go out, listen and walk
all together announcing the Gospel as protagonists and building communion!
So, let’s ensure that our cities are increasingly “civilized” and our Church
local more in conformity with the Gospel, and then Politics will return to being a service of
common good and the Church, Mother of hearts that generate loving relationships.
I entrust our cities and the people who live in them to the Archangel Michael
he wants to build a history of solidarity, justice and peace and I beg him to free
society, Church and every citizen and believer from every form of self-referentiality that
idolizes the self, forgetting God and causing the death of others.
+ Franco Moscone crs, archbishop
