From San Marino information (by Don Luca Bernardi*) – Even from the security that being in our Republic can give us, we cannot help but look carefully at what is happening beyond our borders: the situation that Europe is experiencing from France to Italy, without forgetting Belgium and Spain, should question us.
Not so much on the policies to be adopted in these cases (politics does not save man), not even to show attitudes of contrast or understanding on one side or the other.
However, let’s take stock of the situation: riots have taken place in the streets in Milan, Paris, Marseille, Brussels and other European cities where thousands of people, especially young people, who took to the streets for different reasons, ended up carrying out acts of civil guerrilla warfare. All this is truly opening a window on the situation of our continent. Many think that the state, civil and social situation of our European realities is rosy and flourishing; our wealth, or veneer of wealth, does not make us see the situation that many people live in, who are not only poor, but in situations of hardship perhaps never touched by our society. We have the problem of inflation, war, climate, unsuitable schools; we have the problem of immigration, integration, divided families, of a social stratum that cannot cope with the many problems that have arisen in recent years; there is the inconvenience due to the high cost of fuel, the disproportionate increase in the prices of basic consumer foods, we have the problem of social media and the effects they leave on people; even our relaxation has been put in check: the difficulty in finding fuel for the planes, the war situations in various parts of the world, but I would also like to say the perception that around us there is no longer the security that perhaps once hovered in our world.
This list is certainly incomplete, but it was necessary to clarify the mind on today’s reality.
There are many questions to ask here: where does this strong discomfort come from? Why must the difficulties of school or the cost of living lead to this devastation? Why has such anger been cultivated in our young people?
Months ago I wrote about the void that this historical period seems to dig in the hearts of many; probably this void also produced the anger we saw. In this regard, I was struck by reading the words of a leader of a Catholic movement:
“I believe that the violence of these days does not fully describe who these kids are. Their heart is made, like that of anyone, of a radical desire for good, for truth, for justice. That violence rather manifests an absence: the absence of a purpose worth committing ourselves to, together. When a horizon of meaning is missing, when hope is missing, it becomes impossible to build: it just destroys itself. And the catastrophist narrative with which we often talk about the future of the world, which especially afflicts the new generations, only fuels this spiral.
In these words I think there is something to think about and reflect on. Good, like evil, spreads and produces effects that we are not always able to fully grasp or slow down in time.
Another question to ask is: in our reality, are we aware of the discomfort that our children and young people can harbor? We are really able to intercept what happens and what they absorb (perhaps not even we adults are able to realize how much we are influenced by average)?
A few weeks ago I heard a young man say that the Church, for example, was no longer able to intercept the needs of young people because the answers it gives are preset on different questions than those of young people. It is necessary, in his opinion, to create or recreate intermediate places in order to grasp the stimuli and questions of these generations, without reaching the extremes that we have seen in this last period. On this position we need to rethink and reevaluate many of our institutions.
*Don Luca Bernardi, parish priest of Faetano
