Ugandan ceasefire brokered by Sant’Egidio Community

Mario Giro, a spokesman for St. Egidio, told Vatican Radio that the agreement does not end the conflict in Uganda, but it is a critical first step. "The most difficult thing was to begin," he said, and the ceasefire is a bid to overcome "20 years of mistrust." Now, he said, "we have to catch the momentum" of the agreement with further negotiations.

Earlier efforts to launch negotiations between the government of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army have foundered, as rebel leaders failed to turn up for scheduled negotiating sessions. The rebels later announced that they did not trust the government to honor safe-conduct pledges.

The Lord’s Resistance Army, headed by Joseph Kony, has ample reason to be concerned about government pledges of clemency. Kony is the subject of an international arrest warrant, having been cited by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu, Uganda, has been critical of the international arrest warrant, saying that it has discouraged participation in peace talks and thus is "blocking the peace initiative."

The St. Egidio community, founded in 1968 and formally recognized by the Holy See in 1986, now has 50,000 members, primarily in Italy but also in 70 other countries. The group has often conducted what has been described as a "parallel diplomacy" reflecting the policies of the Vatican.

The St. Egidio community has previously been instrumental in negotiations in Guatemala, Mozambique, Algeria, and Ivory Coast.

Pope sends message of support for forthcoming Assisi gathering

Benedict XVI received a delegation from Sant’Egidio at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo yesterday. The delegation included founder Andrea Riccardi, its president Marco Impagliazzo, and its spiritual adviser and Bishop of Terni-

The meeting for peace will take place in Assissi on September 4-5 to mark the 20th anniversary of teh inter-religious meeting held there by John Paul II.

Marazziti said the Pope’s absence at this meeting was expected since he has cut down his public commitments .

The Pope’s meeting with the Sant’Egidio delegation lasted 40 minutes and it was "very warm and affectionate, with discussions that were in depth."

"Dialog between the great religions and peace were discussed, as well as Africa and the wars in that continent," said Marazziti, who pointed out that Sant’Egidio recently played an active role towards the signing of an agreement to stop hostilities in northern Uganda.

"The Pope wanted to know how our contacts there were doing and he was pleased with the news we gave him."

Among the religious leadrs expected in Assissi next week are Grand Rabbi Cohen of Haifa (Israel); Rabbis Toaff and Di Segni from Rome; Ibrahim Ezzedine, adviser to the presidency of the United Arab Emirates; Ishmael Noko, secretary of the Wolrd Lutheran Federation; and Jean-Arnold de Clermont, president of the Conference of European Churches.

The Pope will be represented by Cardinals Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Councils for Inter-religious DIalog and for Culture) and Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

And from Magister…a 10-point plan for peace in the Middle East?

A ten-point plan “for a definitive peace in the Middle East” has been making the rounds for a few days in the Vatican and in the embassies, and has arrived on the pope’s desk.

The author is a Jesuit who was born in Egypt and has lived in Lebanon, a professor at the Université Saint Joseph in Beirut, at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and at the Centre de Théologie Sèvres in Paris, and founder and director of the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Arabes Chrétiennes in Lebanon: Fr. Samir Khalil Samir.

Benedict XVI knows him and highly respects him. In September of 2005, the pope held a closed-door seminar at Castel Gandolfo with Samir and other scholars of Islam, on the concept of God in the Qur’an.

Already on August 22, www.chiesa released a provisional first draft of Fr. Samir’s text, in French. And even before that, on August 10, a shorter and earlier version was released by the agency “Asia News.” But in recent days Fr. Samir has produced a more extensive and precise final version, which he has circulated in Italian and English as well as in French.

It is a highly interesting document to read, above all because it sets forth with a rare degree of clarity – see for example the paragraphs entitled “Getting to the roots of the problem” – the premises that guide the politics of the Catholic Church in the Middle East. They are premises that differ considerably from those of Israel, beginning with the assessment of its birth as a state in 1948.

This does not change the fact that the ten points in which Fr. Samir develops his peace plan are, for their own part, innovative in some respects, being more attentive to the interests of the Jewish state than has been the policy of the Holy See until now.

With respect to other approaches to the question of the Middle East found among leading Church figures, Fr. Samir’s stakes out a middle ground.

On the one side is the more pro-Arab orientation of the Vatican secretariat of state directed by cardinal Angelo Sodano, a reflection of the even more pronounced pro-Arab stance that characterizes the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem.

On the opposite side is a stance that is more sympathetic toward Israel’s interests. Representatives of this stance include both the Custody of the Holy Land, since it has been directed by Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and the Holy See’s main negotiator with the Israeli authorities, Franciscan Fr. David Maria Jaeger. On the level of theoretical analysis, its most lucid interpreter is professor Vittorio E. Parsi, a commentator on international politics for “Avvenire,” the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference headed by cardinal Camillo Ruini.

Here, then, is the text by Fr. Samir, translated by Fr. Wafik Nasry, S.I.:

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