Matteo Zuppi’s commitment to peace and fraternity, in Italy and all over the world, began early. Very early. When he was high school student in the seventies, he joined the Community of Sant’Egidio and did voluntary work with children from the suburbs, Roma from the shantytowns, lonely elderly and homeless people. Then the vocation to the priesthood came up. So, the seminary. And, when he was still a young priest, in the eighties, he worked for the peace agreement in Mozambique with great patience. And, in Africa again, by Nelson Mandela’s side, he was involved in the Great Lakes reconciliation process.
In his capacity of Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, he did not cease to get passionately involved in the contemporary tragedies of the refugees, from Africa to Ukraine. He does not forget about the tragedies of the past too: in march 2016 he accompanied 450 students in a “journey of memory” to the Nazi concentration camps, with the peculiar company of the singer-songwriter Francesco Guccini, whose most famous song was about Auschwitz although he never had been there.
When he was a young seminarian, Zuppi, with the founder of Sant’Egidio Andrea Riccardi, answered the Mozambican bishop Jaime Gonçalves’ appeal. At that time the Bishop of Beira cried for help to his country devastated by a civil war. So, in the eighties Father Matteo studied Portuguese and went back and forth between Italy and Mozambique along with Riccardi. He established connections with both the parties at war: with the leftist Frelimo and the conservative Renamo. They were years when even in Africa the contraposition between USA and USSR was reflected.
A long-time diplomatic labour prepared the final stage of the negotiation which, in two years, brought to the historical pace agreement, signed in the former convent in Piazza Sant’Egidio, in Trastevere area. After that, Latin America. Father Matteo – meanwhile appointed curate of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere – is remembered for his contribution to the propagation of the Community in South America, starting from Argentina.
In 1994, Ruanda was the theatre of one of the most horrific genocides of the 20th Century, the slaughter of about one million of Tutsis at the hands of the Hutus. That violence prepared the ground to other two wars which involved Burundi since 1998 until 2002: that country, allied with Uganda and Ruanda, clashed with the Democratic Republic of Congo, backed by Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, and Chad. Father Matteo left to Africa again and took part in the Burundi peace process, held in Arusha, Tanzania, and led by Nelson Mandela. The great South African leader of the fight against apartheid entrusted one of the four Commissions of the negotiation, the ceasefire commission, to Zuppi. The negotiation was successful, although the attained peace is in a precarious balance.
The new President of the Italian Bishops did not abandon his tenacious activity of “peace builder”, even when he is appointed Archbishop of Bologna. Cardinal Zuppi raised his voice one year ago, on the occasion of the umpteenth shipwreck of migrants off Tripoli on 23rd April 2021. «Nobody answered a SOS – he said then – and those poor corpses are now a great allegation of failure to give assistance against us all: if we don’t help, then we kill». The tragedy of the carnages in the Mediterranean Sea has been discussed in the book Zuppi wrote with Lorenzo Fazzini, published by PIEMME in 2019, You Shall Hate Your Neighbour as Yourself: Why Have We Forgotten Fraternity: Reflections about the Fears of the Present Time. Among the different subjects, Zuppi exposes the warmongering distortion of the language, that transforms the shipwrecks in “landings” and the refugees in “invaders”.
Those refugees are equal to many Ukrainians fled in the last months from the devastations of the Russian invasion. At the beginning of last April, the Archbishop of Bologna spoke words of condemnation against the arms race, triggered by the new conflict. «This is the worst thing we can do. There is need of aids and we all need disarmament». Because one thing is «the right of self-defence of Ukraine, but arms rice… no. We need to find a way to stop the war and we must disavow it, as we read in the Constitution, so that it is no longer the tool to solve problems».
[Luca Liverani]
And, in 2016, a “journey of memory” to Auschwitz with 450 student and the singer-songwriter Francesco Guccini
