Responding to the call of unions, secular associations on the left or other from the Catholic world, several tens of thousands of people paraded “for peace” on Saturday in the Italian capital.
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Between unanimous support for the Vatican position in the conflict, exhortation to a cease-fire with sometimes uncertain contours, fears of a nuclear escalation mixed with references to the first political struggles in the era Meloni, the war in Ukraine found a singular resonance box in Rome on Saturday November 5. Responding to the call of unions, secular associations on the left or other from the Catholic world, several tens of thousands of people walked in procession “for peace” in the capital, in a climate where international issues n ‘have stopped echoing internal policy issues.
This is the case in Rome, where a political class divided on sending weapons to kyiv must take into account an opinion worked by the material consequences of the conflict as much as by a more powerful pacifist movement than elsewhere, And where the diplomacies of the two sovereign states coexist in the same city, and not necessarily aligned, which are the Italian Republic and the Vatican. The resulting complex reality was embodied in the afternoon under the monumental facade of the Saint-Jean-de-Latran basilica, among the large crowd assembly on the square and on stage, over the speeches of religious leaders , lay Catholics, pacifist activists and representatives of the progressive left and trade unionists, gathered under the moral aegis of the Sovereign Pontiff.
“This rally which brings together several Italian cultural and political families has the common reference the position expressed by Pope Francis on the conflict,” said the world Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Sant’Egidio community, who is among the organizers of the Saturday event. Invested with an emergency mission to the poorest and mediation in several armed conflicts around the world, this influential organization on an international scale and evolving in the orbit of the Holy See had already invited in Rome, at the end of October, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, during his annual rally for peace.
Put peace at the heart of speeches
The visit of the Head of State, who had also resulted in a meeting with the Pope, was then to, for Mr. Riccardi and Sant’Egidio, “contribute to the rebirth of a culture of peace on the international scene “. The demonstration on Saturday extends this initiative, linked to the positioning of the Holy See as expressed in the appeal launched by the Pope before the Angelus prayer on October 2. François had then marked an inflection by urging the president of the Russian Federation to arrest war, while calling Ukraine to be open to the prospect of negotiations.
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