From San Marino information (by Don Luca Bernardi*) – The debate in the Republic has been heated for months now on some issues such as the Bulgarian affair or cases of public morality.
They are decisive and divisive topics, so I will focus on them in a general discussion, which does not only concern the cases in question, but everything that concerns justice and the functionality of democratic structures.
On what basis should justice operate and what are the interests that revolve around it? Justice must look first and foremost at the principle of “giving to each their own”, but today, unfortunately, it will be because the majority intends something else, it is no longer the principle in itself that is important, but rather formal respect for the law.
If the dictates, deadlines and procedures regarding the carrying out of justice are respected, there is nothing that should be reproached for the system. Yet, although the process has perhaps been formally respected, a sense of incompleteness and general dissatisfaction remains. This is what sometimes happens in areas like this. We forget about the substance, the meat of the issues, respecting only the form of the institutions. We could paraphrase the Gospel: if the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, so nowadays justice should be done for man and not the other way around.
You understand that in the face of this reading of reality something escapes us and we need to re-educate the sense of justice, the duty to truly respond not only to those who suffer, but also to an entire citizenry who now struggle to believe what politics says. It is necessary to start again from school: caught up as we are in individualism, we need to give children back a sense of responsibility that is not only personal but also collective. For example, don’t be afraid to tell it like it is, don’t be afraid to dispel certain myths either. Also talk about what happens in the Republic to try to involve young people in the issues.
It should also be respected when the will of the people is expressed when it is expressed forcefully. What is our ruling class guided by? What is the good for our people? We should respond to the hunger for justice that many San Marino people are asking for themselves and their families.
I would like to leave you with this piece taken from the City of God by Saint Augustine: “If justice is not respected, what are states if not large gangs of thieves? Because even the gangs of brigands, what are they if not small states? … If the evil gang increases with the addition of perverse men so much so that it possesses territories, establishes residences, occupies cities, subjugates peoples, it more openly assumes the name of state which is now granted to it in the reality of the facts not from the reduction of the ambition to possess but from greater security in impunity. With finesse and truth at the same time a captured pirate replied to Alexander the Great. The king asked him what idea he had to infest the sea. And he with frank bravado: “The same as you to infest the whole world; but I am considered a pirate because I do it with a small ship, you are a leader because you do it with a large fleet”.
*Don Luca Bernardi – parish priest of Faetano
(Published in full after 10pm)
