ABSTRACT: The encounter between Pope John Paul II and the Jewish community of Rome was a climactic celebration and affirmation of civic culture and humanity, a defense of the "lay" values of tolerance and dramatic, creative dialogue.

(IL TEMPO, April 15, 1986)

Dear Editor,

I will long remember "Il Tempo" with deep gratitude for the importance and the space it saw fit to dedicate - almost alone among the large daily papers - to that historical moment which was given to each of us and to the world yesterday by Pope John Paul II and the Jewish community with its chief Rabbi Elio Toaff.

And I beg you to receive my subscription to "Il Tempo" as an attempt to thank you and as a sign of solidarity. It is in fact the first time that I - in almost sixty years of life and more than a quarter of a century as a journalist - that I have subscribed to a daily paper. For this too, then, I must thank you.

The event was something great in itself. The way in which it took place made of it an occasion of overwhelming civic culture and extraordinary, humane beauty. Thanks to the invitation made by the Jewish community to almost all the "official" political, institutional and party spheres, I was able to attend together with my comrade Francesco Rutelli, Speaker of the Radical [parliamentary] group. Before going to the synagogue we felt the need - in vain - to declare publicly what a singularly happy day this was, how dense with life and history, civilisation and hope, for those who try to live the lay religion of tolerance and freedom with some degree of rigour, experiencing some success and some moments of crisis.

As a "non-believer" (or rather "another kind" of believer, or a believer in "something else"), as a convinced and efficacious - I hope! - anti-clerical from love of religiosity and respect for the "essence" of the clergy, I was finally able to attend, in my country, in Rome, a climactic celebration and affirmation of civic culture and humanity, of the defense of the "lay" values of tolerance and dramatic, creative dialogue of gentle strength within which - not without suffering and then joy - centuries-old nodes of tragedy, of bitterness, of hatred and hence of fear were dissolved by intelligence and love.

Not a moment, dear editor, of misplaced, unessential rhetoric. At most a marginally emphatic note and thus of persistent solitude here and there. Long and even hard moments, justified because not due to themselves but to a past so very present. The initial, very measured, severe welcome and words of the President of the Community and the Chief Rabbi that expressed (nothing more than) "appreciation" and "satisfaction" for the Pope's visit. The extraordinary, intense, pallid, gentle and at times suffering face of John Paul II. The great difficulty of the hosts in honouring the historical truth which could not and must not be left implicit, unspoken on this very day. The unrelenting, complete and courageous defense by the Chief Rabbi, explicitly extended to "all peoples", not only to the blacks of South Africa, to the Catholics and Jews in the Soviet Union (and in the long bursts of applause that interrupted him, many believed that the idea included "all" the peoples, of Israel and of Palestine, as well)..

. And finally, the oration which I think was the most beautiful, the deepest, the most universally religious, the most civic and political (with respect to life and the values that must govern the cities and inhabitants of the earth) which I have ever heard the Pope make.

I wonder, dear editor, if "Il Tempo" could not find a way to publish in full and in its sequence the entire text of the ceremony. In that way, perhaps one could better learn and understand too how an ever more radical Radical, how such a determined and exigent friend of the Jewish Community and of Israel, yesterday repeated to himself the apparent quip: "If I had to choose, today, between joining "this" church or "this" state, I would join the former".

Which state was of course absent for the greater part of its party and party-power representatives. They were probably making the rounds of assemblies at Pordenone or Rocca Cannuccia [two small towns named at random, ed.], or "verifying" who knows what, or perhaps one knows all too well what. Caesar was absent, in short: but not from respect or conscious choice. Simply because today Caesar wants his little conveniences. And the first among these are "my lay people". May Voltaire forgive them...

During the hours of "civic" or "religious" instruction (oh dear God, how patient you are obliged to be with this world!) it could be useful for many, for themselves and their pupils, with no danger of "falling into syncretism" but from fidelity to their own ideas and different cultures, to discover that yesterday once again the "lay" ideas of justice and liberty, which history has enormous need of more than ever, took on its lineaments, voice and substance from a "church" and not from "Agorà". It is no accident if Italian journalism in general has instead considered that people, men and women, are much more concerned about the outcome of a soccer match, or a party-politics one, played and lost in Florence among hosannas. To each his own. It is just necessary to establish and state the fact.