Among the proposals for young people is a road trip reflecting on peace and migration. And then the service and animation camps and the pilgrimage to France
A road trip through the Balkans, moving along the lines of some major current issues, from peace to migration, and allowing ourselves to be challenged by encounters along the way. “Exodus” has an intense program, the new summer proposal created by PIME animation for young people, which adds to the traditional camps in Italy, the pilgrimage on foot and, naturally, the mission trips for the kids who have attended the walks throughout the year.
«We wanted to propose a different experience, which would put us in contact with the troubled history of some peoples to ask ourselves what the Gospel asks of each of us today regarding the most urgent questions that challenge us», explain Father Ivan Straface and father Vivier Sikoua, who from 29 July to 11 August will accompany the children on this bus itinerary from Milan to Thessaloniki, passing through Trieste and Sarajevo, Pristina and Belgrade. Places that evoke the conflicts of the 1990s after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, but also the route followed by thousands of migrants fleeing wars and poverty, with the mirage of entering “Fortress Europe”.
Precisely the challenges experienced by the local Church in welcoming those arriving at the gates of the Old Continent will be at the center of the first stop in Trieste, a historic border city that Pope Francis will visit on 7 July. This port overlooking the East, a crossroads of global maritime exchanges for centuries, preserves the legacy of those crossroads of languages, peoples and religions that have forged its Central European and Mediterranean soul, but also of the wounds linked to the Second World War. After having crossed the former Yugoslavia, it will then be in Sarajevo that young people will be able to enter the heart of a land tormented thirty years ago by a conflict whose traumas are far from being resolved. But in the Bosnian capital, through discussions with witnesses and visits to places symbolic of culture, faiths, ancient and recent history, there will also be the opportunity to understand the richness of a plurality, on the ridge between East and West, which conflicts they have not managed to erase and which must be cultivated to avoid falling back into the traps of hatred. Among the scheduled meetings, the one with Monsignor Pero Sudar, auxiliary bishop of the city for 26 years and promoter of inter-ethnic schools, where the challenge of an education that aims to create a shared memory in the very young and forge a common vision for the future.
“It will be an opportunity to reflect on the choices we are called to make every day to safeguard the gift of peace, which the Lord has already given us, as we remember every time we celebrate the Eucharist”, explain Father Ivan and Father Vivier.
Dialogue, ecumenism and the opposing forces towards acceptance or exclusion will be at the center of the days in the Serbian capital Belgrade, whose imposing fortress at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava testifies to the strategic position of the city for the Roman and Byzantine empires, Serbian and Austrian. The visit to Tito’s Mausoleum will allow the children to understand the contradictions linked to the failed experiment of federation between peoples in the name of socialism. And if there is an opportunity to experience the cosmopolitan breath of the city, it will be possible to perceive how fresh the trauma of the wars of recent decades remains in the memory. The conflict with Kosovo, fought between 1998 and 1999, left serious consequences which will be perceptible during the stage in Pristina. In the capital of the country which self-proclaimed independence in 2008, the group will among other things be able to learn about the work of the Jesuit Refugee Service in reception camps for migrants.
The final destination of the journey will be Thessaloniki, an important Greek center with an extremely rich and plural history, made unique among other things by the events of its Jewish community, which in 1910 had 65 thousand members out of 132 thousand inhabitants. Here the young people will immerse themselves in the context told in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of Saint Paul to the inhabitants of Thessalonica – Thessaloniki, precisely -, a flourishing economic center which with its port dominated the Aegean. «The same subtitle of the journey, “Even beyond”, is taken from the first letter to the Thessalonians, which says: “The news of your faith in God goes even further, it spreads everywhere”. A phrase that conveys the meaning of testimony beyond cultural affiliations and borders.”
The experience is open to all young people between 18 and 30 years old (information: [email protected]).
While this summer around eighty young people will leave for the mission in Africa, Asia and Latin America – among the destinations Brazil and Mexico, Bangladesh and Thailand, India, Cameroon, Hong Kong, Cambodia – the other proposals of PIME animation also return : this year the pilgrimage will be in France, from Tamié to Taizé (from 16 to 29 August), while for those who want to get involved in missionary service and animation there is the meeting-work camp in Busto Arsizio (work camp. [email protected]) and the Street Animation Camp in Ducenta, from 31 July to 14 August ([email protected]).
All the information is on the site centropime.org