Nourishing Dreams

«The world is weary, it has grown old; the world is divided, and it seems advantageous to divide it further, to divide ourselves still more. Be careful!»
A warning—one that would prove prophetic—issued in 2019 by Pope Francis to young people at an interreligious and ecumenical gathering in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. The following year, Bergoglio signed the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, a "humble contribution to reflection so that, in the face of various current ways of eliminating or ignoring others, we might be capable of responding with a new dream of fraternity and social friendship that transcends mere words."
Five years have passed since then. The pandemic had laid bare our fragility; yet that impulse to eliminate or ignore others seems today to be gaining ground over the truth of encounter and the communion essential to life.
Francis spoke again to those young people: "No one can face life in isolation. You cannot live your faith, your dreams without community—not locked away in your own heart or behind closed doors at home, isolated within four walls. You need a community to sustain you, to help you, and through which you help one another to look ahead." He went on: "We must have the courage to be different, to show the world other dreams than those it offers, to bear witness to the beauty of generosity, of service, of purity, of fortitude, of forgiveness, of fidelity to our calling, of prayer, of the struggle for justice and the common good, of love for the poor, of social friendship."
We gather the fruits of this dream in the voices that fill the pages of this issue of Ombre e Luci, a natural continuation of our Sorelle tutte (2024). We are convinced that we must continue to nourish the dream evoked in Francis's words: "Let us dream as one humanity, as pilgrims made of the same human flesh, as children of this same earth that shelters us all, each with the riches of his or her faith or convictions, each with his or her own voice, all brothers and sisters!"