Home » The memory of Cardinal Zuppi: “Desmond Tutu taught to keep justice and forgiveness together”

The memory of Cardinal Zuppi: “Desmond Tutu taught to keep justice and forgiveness together”

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BOLOGNA – “He taught us to fight against all apartheid and, in doing so, to hold together the commitment to justice with forgiveness”. Matteo Zuppi, cardinal and archbishop of Bologna, met Desmond Tutu shortly after he became Nobel Peace Prize winner in the Community of Sant’Egidio: at a prayer vigil for peace in Santa Maria in Trastevere and, in 1988, at the inauguration of the Tent of Abraham, the first shelter for foreigners in the Community.

What do you remember most of him, of this giant who helped forge Mandela’s South Africa?
“His smiling eyes, his strength: small in stature, he was overwhelming, of enormous human sympathy and incredible energy, but also of great spirituality. He was very direct, he lived the Gospel not as abstract spirituality, but embodied in the events of his people: a man of prayer and at the same time very attentive to history, to the injustices he opposed. I remember him as a fighter for the freedom of all, a man of God who defended the dignity of the person because he saw the image of God in everyone. then, he was archbishop of ecumenical dialogue “.

Did you meet again?
“Not anymore, not in recent years. The contacts have remained via email. He was grateful for the commitment spent for peace in Mozambique and he said to us: when at Christmas I see you with the poor at lunch in the basilica, God smiles. He made a lot of friendship. with the Community, two things struck him very much in Rome “.

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Which?
“He was moved by the sight of the mosaic at the monastery of San Tommaso sul Celio in which Jesus frees a white and a black man. Here, it was what he wanted: all suffer slavery and need to be freed. Liberation is interdependent: it is a of the lessons we have left, as well as the great indication that he gave, and which was an important experience for South Africa, not to miss forgiveness and justice, not to allow violence to continue with more violence. intelligent who testified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission “.

What remains of his beloved rainbow nation?
“Desmond Tutu was able to make the South African people’s expectation his own within Mandela’s season, which founded reference values, an example for so many situations of oppression and injustice. Contradictions, problems and even some disappointments remain. A country where we learn to live together, to fight all apartheid, even the most invisible ones that become prejudices, habits, which grow in standardization “.

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