"Lebanon, land of peoples and religions" is the meeting organized by the Family International Monitor within the international film festival Popoli e Religioni of Terni on 12 November.
The meeting, coordinated by Valeria Guarino of the Family Monitor, has beeen attended by Father Youssef Abi Zeid, Director of the Associate Centre of the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II of La Sagesse University in Beirut, Father Rouphael Zgheib, Director of the Pontifical Missionary Works in Lebanon and Professor of Fundamental Theology and Ecclesiology and the Vaticanist Riccardo Cristiano.
Lebanon is a complex land, home to different peoples and religions, with a history that oscillates between laceration and acceptance, coexistence and conflict.
The meeting has been opened by a short excerpt of the documentary Son of the streets by Mohammed Almughanni, set in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila.
Its interfaith and plural nature, combined with a crucial geopolitical position, exposes Lebanon to be a battleground and a sounding board for the political, social and economic repercussions of the whole Middle East area, and to be a permanent laboratory for the challenge of inter-religious and intercultural coexistence.
In the last year, while the country was already experiencing a deep economic crisis, with the protests and political instability that followed, the Coronavirus health emergency and the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August last year brought the capital to its knees.
What and how can we draw from Lebanese reality and experience in the development of a model of society based on pluralism, citizenship, rights and brotherhood, as advocated by Pope Francis in his last encyclical? These are the questions explored during the meeting, which has been also an opportunity to remember, a few days before his 66th birthday, Father Paolo dall'Oglio, the Italian Jesuit kidnapped seven years ago in Syria.
Watch our meeting in the following video (from 0:00:00 to 01:08:00).
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