DIALOP met Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. The meeting was an extremely insightful moment for going further in the dialogue between Christians and Marxists. Three words synthesize the reflections Cardinal Tolentino has shared with DIALOP: friendship, realism and hope.
FRIENDSHIP – DIALOP informed Cardinal Tolentino of the trajectory of the last year, including the audience with Pope Francis, the conference on integral ecology, the webinar on migration and the emergence of DIALOP’s national groups in several countries. Cardinal Tolentino expressed the esteem for all these developments and considered that the connection between us goes well beyond work and is based on mutual friendship. The notion of political friendship, developed by Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti has a concrete expression in the relationship we are willing to densify.
REALISM – We are living in historical moments of change of social, economic, ecological, political and cultural conditions. The hyper-concentration of wealth goes together with the abandonment of basic democratic assumptions and with a growing naturalization of warfare. In order to respond responsibly to this historical moment, both Marxists and Christians are called to read reality in a rigorous manner, identifying the concrete structures of sin and the concrete strategies of hope in place today.
HOPE – Marxists and Christians are both called to assume hope as the true alternative to the hegemony of the recessive tendencies of today. Not a cheap and superficial hope, but a hope that departs from the acknowledgement of the concrete difficulties and dangers that the new dimensions of capitalism, the disseminated social aggression, the narrowing of democracy and rights, and the persistence of ecological irresponsibility pose to all those who struggle for dignity and justice for all. As Cardinal Tolentino stated, our common duty is to give hope a political meaning.
The delegation at the Vatican library, an historical visit during the Roman days.
St. Peter’s square welcomes us.
Card. Tolentino de Mendonça (sitting at the table front) appreciates and supports our project.