HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE BOLOGNATODAY WHATSAPP CHANNEL
This year the official celebrations for Republic Day were an opportunity to remember the victims of the Suviana power plant. The mayor of Bologna did it, Matteo Leporewho in his speech in Piazza San Domenico, wanted to remember the seven victims in the accident at the power station and all the other deaths at work.
The ceremony was opened by the prefect Attilio Visconti which, after having reviewed with the commander of the Emilia-Romagna Carabinieri Legion, general Massimo Zuccherthe picket made up of various law enforcement agencies, read the message sent by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella who “invites us to defend every day the independence and democracy achieved with the Liberation struggle, in communion of intent and with the ability to cooperate for the common good.”
Among the authorities present, in addition to the deputy minister Galeazzo Bignamiin the front row and nearby there were also the president of the Ucoii Yassine Lafram alongside Daniele De Paz, president of the Jewish community of Bologna.
Dialogue between the different communities restarts
Today’s meeting, for the president of the Jewish Community DePaz, was a way to “stimulate a true constructive dialogue with great awareness of the value of diversity, regardless of the effects of politics”. For De Paz, in fact, gestures that are too politically connoted “at the moment are not good for anyone. And therefore I am also referring to the gesture of displaying the “Palestinian flag in the Municipality of Bologna” which belongs exactly to the political sphere”. To restart the dialogue in a profitable way, however, for De Paz, it is necessary to “try to take everyone a little step back and get to work” in order to be able to return to discussions in a constructive manner.
“We need to build a space where the dynamics and positions that belong to each individual community form a common front in a large community”, he reiterates, ensuring that today is the first of a series of meetings that encourage interreligious dialogue and relaunches the project of House of Dialogue between cultures and religions, also carried out with the president of the CEI, Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi.
The president of the Ucoii also focuses precisely on interreligious dialogue, Yassine Lafram. With the president of the Jewish Community De Paz “we have always known what each other’s ideas are on the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so it is absolutely nothing new for us that we find ourselves on the positions” expressed in recent days “to a greater extent right with the conflict becoming increasingly bloody and the victims becoming more and more, especially women and children”. “We have always tried to separate what is the good of the community from what is the conflict between the parties – adds Lafram -. Everyone maintains their positions without forgetting that we share a territory, that of Bologna, and we are all part of a single community of citizens”. For Lafram, therefore, we must “work” to maintain “cohesion among citizens beyond their faith affiliations. We have interpreted it best in that path of interreligious dialogue that we have carried out together for years, obviously together also to Cardinal Zuppi and other religious communities present in the city”. “The idea, however, is to relaunch this path that we have already been pursuing for years because we must, let’s say, treasure that work of sharing that common path that we have interpreted”, he concludes.
