Mr President of the Republic of Tanzania,

Mr President of Ecuador,

Mr Prime Minister of Italy, Honourable Romano Prodi,

Your Holiness,

Beatitudes,

Distinguished Representatives of the Christian Churches, Ecclesial Communities and Great World Religions,

Pessimism often clouds our eyes, like a fog, and we are not able to see the future. There are always reasons that justify pessimism. They simply exist. Many are drawn from the violence that occurs every day in the corners of the world. It is violence of terrorism and crime, in a world that is now, for more than half of its population, urbanized. Ours is a world of cities, rather than rural areas. It is the violence of war, easily ennobled as an ordinary and normal means to solve conflicts. Many are the reasons that justify pessimism, and pessimism generates fear of the others. The fog of pessimism clouds the human face of the other, and ultimately justifies violence. Pessimism seems to be the unavoidable truth of history.

For entire peoples, nations, and cultures, fear is not only a feeling. It turns into barren policies, incapable of visions of how to make a country or the world a better place. Fear is made into culture, when culture is contempt for the other, because the other belongs to another religion, another ethnic group, or because he or she is different. The culture of contempt is as ancient as history itself, but in the era of globalization, its revival is indeed impressive. We are many. We want to protect ourselves and separate ourselves from the others.

The virus of contempt generates dangerous and long-term side effects. Dear friends, contempt for the Jewish people produced the Shoah. Contempt has ruined fruitful bridges between Muslims and Christians, bridges built in the past. The certainty of contempt feeds terrorism in the name of religion, which strikes without seeing the face of the other. Day after day, contempt digs abysses. Often the deadly chain described in the book of the prophet Hosea is fulfilled: �for they sow the wind, and they shall reap the storm�. Today, however, people seem unafraid of the gathering storm; unafraid of the abyss they walk upon.

Facing this huge world, where we see everything thanks to globalization, in front of this immensity, we are struck by panic. It is like the dizziness of globalization. And we are frightened. Fear, contempt, ultimately mental laziness, contraposition, aggressiveness, unconcern� can all be ascribed to a world struck by the dizziness of globalization.

Of course, in our world today people miss and yearn for a comprehensive interpretation of things. Ideologies used to be provide it, but they are over now. They were like idols that assured they had the formula to struggle for a radiant future. Thus, even the providential belief in economy, which should have led to peace and liberty through the development of the markets, is shattered. It has become clear that democracy is not a messianism calling for conversion, but the work of history within concrete people. And now that the age of ideologies is over, as well as the delusions of the nineties and the beginning of the century, is this the time of pessimism and the right of the strong?

To read the global scenario as a clash of civilizations and religions is ideological: it means to try and find the motor of history, like ideologies used to do. But it also has a concrete downside: it leads to despise the other and to believe that his destiny, and even his religious chromosomes, doom him to wage war against me. Giving up the idea of a common destiny for all humanity, of common good, first of all of peace, is a choice caused by the delusion that my peace may exist regardless of everyone else�s peace. Giving up the work for a common destiny for all humanity is a choice that leads to rehabilitate war and does not guarantee my peace. Today, more than yesterday, peace needs to be global.

Are these illusions compared to the inevitable destiny wrought by the powerful currents of history? Believers know that nothing is truly unavoidable. History is rich in turning points and miracles, it is full of unexpected events and concealed forces that eventually surface. I say this because I am personally convinced of it, and with me my friends of Sant�Egidio: this conviction stems from the daily encounter with the wounds of the poor and of poor countries, because we are not professionals of dialogue, but friends of the poor who are hostile to war, the mother of all poverty. This is the source of our love for dialogue.

There is a power of the spirit, humble and humiliated, that can move mountains. La Pira, a great Italian man, a lover of encounter, wrote to John XXIII in 1959: �prayer is a power active in history that moves peoples and nations�. In Burma we saw the unarmed strength of the monks, and today we shall listen to one of them. Fifteen years ago, in Mozambique, we saw the miracle of peace in a people that was reconciled, and also Sant�Egidio worked hard for that reconciliation (and here I feel I should greet the friends from Mozambique, especially, and with great respect, Mrs Guebuza). Men and women of the spirit have a profound strength.

The religious leaders who responded to the appeal of Naples, did so because they do not give in to pessimism. They believe that reality is not only what you see, you buy, you fight against, or you conquer: it is also the world of the spirit. It is what the great world religions say, in different languages and with different theologies. Religions are neither the same, nor equivalent. I say this not only as a believer, but also as a man who practices the history of peoples. All religions remind us, in different ways, that the spirit gives life and makes life possible, and without the spirit the world is made a suffocating place.

The world of the spirit is not a pre-modern essence, swept away by development. It is as ancient as the mountains, Gandhi said. It is a permanent structure of human existence.

The religious leaders who responded to the summons of Naples, show their concern for being together. We know well that religions have fought each other. It is equally true, however, that spiritual currents run deep within them and make them brothers. Let us remember monasticism, which in different religious worlds, from Asia to the West, has inspired human existences and bound stories of the spirit together as brothers. There is a secret history of intimate communication between believers, between saintly men and women. No man is an island, said a great monk, Thomas Merton; but also no world, no religion is truly an island.

By responding to the summons of Naples, religious men and women cry out, loud and clear, that they want to dialogue and they believe in dialogue. Is this a just a fashion? I believe not, for dialogue is embedded in the very hearts of religions: it stems from prayer itself, which is dialogue, even in silence and listening, and it says that we are not self-sufficient, we are in need of the One who is well beyond us.

Religious leaders bear witness to treasures of wisdom, honed by centuries of history and the life of millions of believers. �If we expect nothing of the other, dialogue is born dead� � once wrote a monk, Enzo Bianchi. What sadness when millions of believers, their love and sorrow and faith, mean nothing to me and I expect nothing from them! Expectation from the others, from those who are different from me, is the beginning of hope and the grounds for friendship: the others, who do not believe the way I do, exist, they are interesting to me, they deserve respect, they have something to tell me, I live with them�

Our convergence to a place of dialogue, Naples in these days, shows that religions do not want to divide, they want to dialogue. Dialogue helps the spirit blow with greater strength.

I greet with gratitude the personalities who have gathered here, for they give us hope.

They rally to Naples, and the invitation came from the Community of Sant�Egidio, whom many of you have accompanied for more than twenty years along the path of the spirit of Assisi. But the invitation came also from the Church of Naples, and its Archbishop, Cardinal Sepe. These are troubled times, full of problems, for this great and beautiful city. In the world, Naples is perceived also as a city of violence. And in Naples there is violence, just like there is in many other cities in the world. Great hope, however, grows beneath. Cardinal Sepe, the Archbishop of Naples, is a witness and a protagonist of a new era of hope for this beautiful and strong city: this new time is founded above all on spiritual grounds. As well as the Cardinal, a dear friend of mine for many years, I grasp the opportunity to greet the President of the Region, the President of the Province and the Mayor of Naples, and I thank them for their contribution to this meeting of ours.

The call to Naples comes in the wake of the unforgettable meeting in Assisi, wanted by John Paul II in 1986: �That meeting � the Pope wrote to the Community of Sant�Egidio � possessed a momentous spiritual strength: it was like a source to go back to� a source which gushed forth with new energies of peace�. It was, and so will be every meeting in the name of peace!

Millennium-old religions do not yield to hopelessness, generated by the emotions of an hour or by an image on the TV. The value of peace has always been bound to the world of the spirit. Spiritual men and women can and must talk of the problems of the world (and we shall do so in these days): talk with politicians, with the learned, with secular believers. It is so much necessary to dialogue in our world today, as our horizon grows dim with destabilizing pressure, terrorism, threats of war, and wars that extend from region to region.

It takes new audacity to speak of peace in the name of the spirit and of humankind! We need a new endeavour to blossom at the crossroads of history and in the places of prayer. It must bloom in culture and in practicing life together, in the art of dialogue, and in sincere friendship. Much has been done, but today, this hour, calls for something bigger: a convincing endeavour of peace. The blossoms of dialogue and spirit create kindness among peoples, nations and religions. Kindness, which we all need, which the humble and entire civilizations call for, as they face the slow-growing divide between worlds and civilizations that threatens to cause earthquakes.

The blossoms of this dialogue of peace and spirit must bring together worlds that slide away from each other. There are delicate frontiers, like those connecting Asia to the West, where there is so much trafficking and so little reflection; like the vital relationship between Africa and Europe. Africa, often pushed to the margins of history, has a crucial role to play. And I grasp this opportunity to greet with respect and friendship the President of the Republic of Tanzania, a country where Muslims and Christians live together in peace and kindness. Or like the delicate situation in the European Union, which President Prodi recently gave critical support to, so that the EU can be an offer of civilization to the world. I greet him and thank him for his considerate presence.

The divide between worlds produces distance, and distance produces violence. Violence was the companion of the great and tragic XX century. The peace people hoped for at the end of the century did not come. Violence meant death, deprivation of freedom, and lives trodden upon. Violence wants to destroy the humanity of man and make men and women inhuman. This was the aim of violence in the gulags and lagers. It is the same violence that employs religious symbols. The Bosphorus declaration, under the auspices of Patriarch Bartholomew, proclaims however: �The exploitation of religious symbols to support the cause of aggressive nationalism is a betrayal of the universality of faith��.

In the past century, we have known many kinds of violence: the violence of economy, or of letting many people die of AIDS because of lack of treatment. Absurd violence against women, to humiliate the companion and the mother of man. And finally, the useless, but telling violence against places of worship (synagogues, mosques, churches and temples), meaning to cancel the trace of spiritual life from the land of humankind. All places of prayer, even when they are no longer used, are a reminder that peace is the name of God, they are monuments of peace and of the spirit.

Today the world needs a selfless endeavour for peace in the name of the spirit, to conquer the hearts to respect for every human being, to cultivate the sense of unity of the human family in everyone�s heart. This culture of the spirit liberates from violence and from the roots of violence. There is much that religions can do, if they hear the cry of sorrow and the pleas that rises from many parts of the world. Benedict XVI (we are moved by the words of encouragement he addressed to a delegation of this assembly today), with sereneness and clarity, said: �The spirit of Assisi continues to spread throughout the world; it opposes the spirit of violence, the abuse of religion as a pretext for violence�.

I am therefore convinced that these three days of dialogue, friendship and prayer, shall reinforce a bond that will help religious worlds to be less lonely, making peace stronger, and religions more friends of each other. The spirit of Assisi becomes the spirit of Naples. It will be the spirit of a world of peace.