H. Em. Card. Gualtiero Bassetti, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference; Dario Nardella, Mayor of Florence. Introduced by Bernhard Scholz, President of Meeting for friendship amongsts peoples Foundation.

After the important meeting in Bari in 2020 and waiting for the next appointment in Florence where for the first time the gathered Bishops will meet the mayors of the main cities bordering the Mediterranean, at the Meeting a meeting that will be an opportunity for dialogue and discussion to continue to build peace in a crucial area for the whole world. “Rebuild the ties that have been broken, raise the cities destroyed by violence, make a garden bloom where today there is parched land, instill hope in those who have lost it and exhort those who are closed in on themselves not to fear their brother. And to look at this, which has already become a cemetery, as a place of future resurrection of the whole area”, this is the challenge, the work of reconciliation and peace, which Pope Francis has launched to the Bishops of the twenty countries that overlook the Mare Nostrum and that the Mayor of Florence also wanted to extend to all the Mayors of the Mediterranean who will meet in the Tuscan capital between February and March next year.