«Autonomy? Many Southern bishops are concerned. It does not exist without solidarity»- Corriere.it

“I have heard the concern of many bishops of the South regarding the project of autonomy: there is no sustainability without solidarity which does not take away from someone but makes everyone better: this project is called the common good and there is no good if there is no It is common”. This was stated by the president of the CEI, cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, during his remote speech at the 19th national congress of Italian Local Autonomies scheduled today and tomorrow in Pisa. «The issue of autonomy – he explained – is much more serious and profound than a political brawl. We must really look to the future and therefore also to the different positions, hoping to have the same thing at heart, that is, that diversity is an asset and not a division. Only by thinking about it together and in solidarity do we find solutions for everyone: we have a state and a Europe to which we are accountable”.

The Pnrr

“Perhaps we have talked too much about the Pnrr or perhaps how the pandemics, that of Covid and that of war, have revealed who we are, now the problem is to understand whether to be better, whether to choose another way of being”, Zuppi said again . «The Pnrr is a great opportunity for Italy; reading the newspapers it seems to me that we are having a lot of difficulty putting it into practice, but this shouldn’t be a reason to cripple ourselves again but to identify the weaknesses and find a way to remedy them», said the president of the CEI. «If we throw away the Pnrr – added Zuppi – it means that those who do well continue to do well and those who do badly continue to feel worse and continue haphazardly. Here we cannot decide, using a metaphor from my sector, “long live the parish priest”: it is a plan and therefore we must study and choose, but above all we cannot postpone. We have to choose and we have to do it, not someone else ».

The inequalities

«That inequalities have increased and that those who are poor remain poor and even poorer is not good, poverty is not an inheritance. Fighting inequalities means tackling all kinds of poverty, if we know how to deal with inequalities we are not afraid to welcome or that other people come and invest with us”.

Europe

«Everything that helps us to work for common things cannot fail to be a service, then there can be a personal ambition but one only shows who one is if one helps others, the common things. When it’s a service you feel better, if it’s an interest the accounts never add up, instead the service is helping as much as I can ». And she concluded: «We have to mend a lot, there is a lot of rift between us, between us and the greater us which is Europe. If there’s one thing the pandemic has helped us understand, it’s that we’re all in the same boat but we don’t realize it, we don’t help each other anymore. No man is an island and no entity is an island».