On
a weekday night last February in Rome I stumbled into the basilica
of Santa Maria in Trastevere, the home church of the Community of
St Egidio. The basilica's interior is a riot of marble, frescoes,
and gorgeous twelfth-century mosaics. But what stunned me most was
to find it full of twenty-thirty-forty somethings, the very generation
least likely to be found on pews in large numbers. Hundreds of them
were there to pray nightly vespers, led by a four-part choir. The
liturgy with its sung psalms and alleluias felt Benedictine, with
an eastern touch. At its heart was a Christ icon, underlit by candles.
Prayer over, the Basilica broke into little groups which milled around
to chat. Others went across the city to feed the homeless or visit
the elderly.
Since that first visit I've been back to Trastevere twice, each time
snucking off from my assignments to see more of this remarkable group.
I've worked in Sant'Egidio's popular kitchen ( a massive operation
which feeds 1500 people three times a week), marched with them on
a candlelit procession to remember the wartime expulsion of the Jews,
attended an emergency Christian- Muslim summit they organised in October,
and visited parishes in poor parts of Rome where the community brings
together the disabled and the elderly.
Now I join the community at its weekly meeting in Clapham, south
London, where most of the members are evangelical Anglicans. We visit
the elderly on Thursday evenings, then afterwards meet in the chapel
of a nearby hospital for an English version of that same evening prayer
I experienced in Santa Maria. But as I have got more hooked into Sant'Egidio,
it has become harder to describe exactly what it is to my friends.
I have to keep saying it's this, yet not that; or that it's both this
and that; and by the time I'm done, their eyebrows are more knitted
than an Aran sweater.
A new Church movement founded in 1968, the community has barely any
hierarchy, although the older members tend to be the leaders and it
has almost no bureaucracy. It is a "community without walls".
Members take no vows, sign no papers, and are free to come and go
at will (a selling point, I'll admit, for commitment-phobes like me).
Yet for all its fluidity the community is remarkably stable, with
40,000 members in 60 countries round the world, 10,000 of whom are
in Rome. Almost all of these are lay men and women, professionals
like its founder, the historian Andrea Riccardi. But Sant'Egidio also
includes priests and now even a bishop. A movement that was considered
radical, even Protestant, in the 1970s, these days enjoys the friendship
of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, as well the encouragement
of Pope John Paul. It was the Pope who gave the community the task
of hosting the interfaith dialogues which have taken place each year
since the 1968 meeting of religious leaders in Assisi. (This year's
was in Barcelona.)
Sant'Egidio's brilliance is in the way it fits so snugly into a contemporary
urban environment. It answers the deep hunger for prayer, community
and concrete justice, but without defensively withdrawing people away
from the city. There are no structures to do so: the community keeps
no one, and none of the members live together. Becoming part of Sant'Egidio
simply involves comitting to two basic principles of Christian life:
on the one hand prayer; on the other, service of the poor.
Urban loneliness, and how to overcome it, was the first topic Riccardi
and other students discussed on their first meeting in 1968. Leaving
the city for the slums which then ringed the Italian capital, they
roomed in poor tenements, gave after-school classes to immigrants,
and began meeting nightly for prayer. The expanding community eventually
took over a disused Carmelite friary in Trastevere, and adopted the
name of the church, Sant'Egidio (the 'g' is soft), which means St
Giles.
The members' work with the poor led them to reflect on the causes
of poverty, which in turn brought them into peacework. Their most
famous success at international mediation was in 1992, when after
two years of patient negotiation they convinced armed rebels in Mozambique
to renounce violence and enter the political process. Success has
led since then to a stream of invitations to mediate in conflicts
in Africa and Latin America. The results are usually not spectacular,
and mostly unsung, but occasionally news breaks. Two weeks ago, for
example, the community persuaded a Colombian guerrilla to give up
an Italian hostage.
Peacemaking is not the same as pacifism. But Sant'Egidio believes
passionately that "only peace is holy". Just as Jesus did
not recoil from the violence of the Gerasene demoniac, Sant'Egidio
believes there is even more reason to stretch out your hands to the
man with a smoking gun. The model for their approach - which has been
praised by the United Nations as 'the Italian formula' - is the old
tale of St Francis taming the wolf who terrorised the citizens of
the Umbrian town of Gubbio.
Their other public work is interfaith dialogue. Just how extensive
are their contacts was demonstrated in October, when the community
hosted an emergency Christian-Muslim summit in Rome in response to
the post-11 September climate. The gathering of top cardinals and
sheiks made for powerful television images at a time when the world
was speaking darkly of a Christian-Moslem clash. I happened to meet
to the papal preacher, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, outside the
Basilica just before the candlelit liturgy which ended the summit.
"Ah this community," he beamed, "they are prophetic".
The community's move into the Basilica of Santa Maria has meant changing
their evening prayer from a private into a very public liturgy. At
least half of those there each evening are outsiders; foreigners can
pick up headphones on their way into the Basilica and hear the gospel
and the reflection which follows it in any of four languages.
Hard as it is to describe, this fast-expanding community is at root
simple. It gives strung-out citydwellers scripture-based prayer and
numinous liturgy. In its fold, internally-dislocated, geographically-isolated
young people find intimacy and friendship, working together for justice
through friendship with the poor. It has both the spirit of 1968,
and the spirit of all ages. To find out more, visit Sant'Egidio's
multi-lingual website at www.santegidio.it or write to Austen at The
Tablet, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0QZ Tel 020
8222 7369.
