HUMANIZING SOCIETY THROUGH INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

VATICAN CITY, OCT 2, 2006 (VIS) - Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, intervened today in Naples, Italy during the World Habitat Day, organized by the United Nations, its theme this year being "The City, Magnet of Hope". The Archbishop's speech was dedicated to the theme: "The City, Crossroads of Cultures and Multicultural Project".

  The Archbishop said: "The presence of persons from different cultures that live in the same territories is evermore frequent, due above all to the acceleration of the migratory phenomenon", as well as the industrial areas and the metropolis and "in general each nationality represents a culture so we find ourselves facing a cultural and religious pluralism never so fully experienced as today".

  The Prelate asked himself: "How is it possible then, in the city as crossroads of cultures, to develop an intercultural project, tightly connected with the humanization of society? (...) 'Individuals must seek the proper balance between respect for their own identity and recognition of that of others' (...) appreciating each one's values and recognizing that 'every culture, as a typically human and historically conditioned reality, necessarily has its limitations'".

   "At times, cultural relativism, provoked by the phenomenon of globalization, has often been the cause of (...) conflicts, creating fundamentalisms of all types. However, cultures, by their very nature, are not rigid, being the expression of the way a people acts in certain circumstances, capable therefore if interacting through mutual knowledge, confrontation, coexistence and the sharing of common values"  he said.

  "This is why interculturality is obligatory in today's society, to keep the human dimension safe in an evermore globalized world" and "is the privileged educational form. (...) Civil coexistence demands that each individual may easily have access to the cultural system of others, in the practice of 'negotiation' which does not mean renouncing one's own culture, but the search for points of convergence and encounter with respect for the legitimacy of each one".

  The second aspect taken into consideration by the Archbishop was that of the homeless, a problem his dicastery also deals with in the Pastoral Care of the Street.

  He said: "To live in the streets, contrary to what one may think, is not necessarily a choice. (...) The homeless live in conditions of great vulnerability" and this situation "becomes the beginning  of a progressive loss of rights. This makes it more difficult to get aid, almost impossible to find work, including the loss of having identifying papers".

  "The poor people (among which we find emigrants, retired persons, jobless and infirm) become a multitude without name and without a voice, often incapable of defending themselves and of finding resources to better their future. These are persons, living conditions of need and discomfort, whose dignity must always be considered, with all the relative consequences. (...) Therefore also the interventions for them must try to be innovative, breaking the circle of answering the need and (...) starting from the person's abilities and not deficiencies".
CON-SM/INTERCULTURAL/MARCHETTO                VIS 20061002 (510)