No one can be saved alone. Comtatting Covid-19 together, embarking together on paths of peace is the theme of the Holy Father's Message for the 56th World Day of Peace, presented today at the Holy See Press Office. Speakers included Card. M. Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, Secretary of the Dicastery; Mr. Maximo Torero, Chief Economist of the FAO; and the artist Mr. Simone Cristicchi, who offered a musical performance singing a song from his repertoire at the closing of the meeting.
Opening the Meeting Point, Card. Czerny recalled that in the Encyclical "Fratelli tutti", published in 2020, the first year of the pandemic crisis, Pope Francis explained why he wanted to create the Vatican Covid-19 Commission, involving the Holy See's Secretariat of State, the Dicastery for Communication and, as coordinator, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. His desire was for the Church to be at the service of the world plagued by the pandemic, to help all of us respond to the emergency 'as one humanity, as wayfarers made of the same human flesh, as children of this same earth that hosts us all, each with the richness of his faith or convictions, each with his own voice, fratelli tutti!' (FT, 8).
Sr. Smerilli announced that "at the end of the year 2022, the Commission will close its work", explaining that this happens "not because the emergency is over, but because by now the entire Dicastery will work in the manner in which the Commission has worked, that is, in listening and direct dialogue with the Churches and the local realities of every Continent and in collaboration with other Organisms and Dicasteries". "The pandemic," she noted, "has revealed to us more acutely social inequalities and fragilities and has undermined peace in so many places in the world. This has committed the Commission and the Dicastery to work according to the priorities the Holy Father has given us: health, work, food. With one insistence: 'for all'.
After the video message offered by Dr. Maximo Torero; the Italian singer, actor and writer Simone Cristicchi offered a musical performance by singing a song from his repertoire.
