The importance of dialogue between cultures

Bishop Xabi Gomez is Bishop of San Felíu de Llobregat. Committed to the pastoral care of migrants, he gave this conference to the young people of MED 25 gathered in Barcelona for the first session. 

True dialogue does not seek to win, but to understand (Maria Zambrano).

In the wake of the Mediterranean Meetings, the voyage of the Bel Espoir begins today. For its young crew and for us here, this ship that will connect the ports of all the shores of the Mediterranean is a surprise from God and, as its name indicates, a parable of hope, because each boat at sea represents the Church that must cast its nets in this “Lake Tiberias” that is the Mare Nostrum. And it represents not only the Church of the fishermen of the Kingdom of God, but the Church that weaves and connects wider nets because its Lord urges it to build everywhere the “civilization of love”. It is up to us to do this on the shores of a sea that connects 21 countries spread over three continents, Africa, Asia and Europe, and that this year will reach 529 million people. A landscape that is geographically, culturally, humanly, socially, economically and religiously plural and diverse, with countries that welcome much diversity at their borders. Some of them have deep wounds due to wars, violence or inequalities. A mosaic of cultures, but also of hopes.

Data show that on the southern and eastern shores, the number of young people under 25 is twice as high as on the northern shores. Overall, the youth unemployment rate in the Mediterranean is 25%, almost double the world average, and most worryingly, in almost all countries, young people view the future of their nation with pessimism. In many parts of Europe, young people will not reach the level of well-being of their parents. It is therefore not only opportune but necessary to encourage intergenerational solidarity, a sense of belonging, shared cultural identities and confidence in the future. Bel Espoir carries its message to all cultures and religions that populate the region. This could be its message drawn from the words spoken repeatedly by Pope Francis: “No one can be saved alone. We are all in the same boat.”

Faced with individualism, fragmentation, the throwaway culture, indifference, nationalisms and exclusionary fundamentalisms, we humbly say: no one can save himself alone. So, we will sail together, you who take to the sea, we who remain on land and we who sail in the digital world, the Church will sail with the sail of dialogue and social friendship. She will sail, propelled by the air of the Holy Spirit who is creative and creator, who generates diversity and harmony. She will sail like Ulysses, clinging to the mast of the cross so that no danger will make us deviate from our course.

On many digital platforms and in the media, we hear siren songs, prophets of doom who brandish intolerance, prejudice and fear of the unknown. They poison with irrational narratives. To disarm them, we know what pedagogy to use: “listen with the heart” to build a culture of encounter based on empathy and mutual respect; this is the advice of Pope Francis. To listen with the heart, we will do the double exercise of listening to the Holy Spirit and actively listening to ourselves. We are convinced, as Cardinal Aveline said, that “dialogue does not mean renouncing one’s own identity, but enriching it with the vision of the other”. It means being open to learning, accepting diversity and recognizing that the truth can be expressed in multiple ways.

We will sail remembering to connect shores, hearts, sufferings, dreams, common answers and hopes. To sail is to dialogue with hope.

The philosopher María Zambrano has shed essential light on dialogue and poetic reason. For her, dialogue is not only an exchange of ideas, but a way of understanding the other that is born from intuition and empathy. Her concept of poetic reason proposes a deeper and more humanistic knowledge, where words and thought open up to the mystery of the human being and to harmonious coexistence. According to her, "true dialogue does not seek to win, but to understand." This perspective invites us to think of dialogue as an act of joint creation, in which the barriers imposed by rigid language or by the imposition of absolute truths are overcome.

Dear young people and companions, on the path of dialogue, without wanting to interfere in your logbook, allow me to remind you of what unites us, because daily news already reminds us of what separates us.

In order to prepare us for a dialogue between cultures that seeks to understand and not to win, I propose a little game of contrasts that highlights many common values of the Mediterranean:

• We live in the digital cloud, we consume information on screens without textures. Unlike the predominant digital culture, where reality is dematerialized, the peoples who inhabit the shores of the Mediterranean are cultures rooted in the tangible and the sensory. In our traditions, we experience life through the senses: touch, smell, taste and sight play a crucial role in the construction of reality. We perceive it for example through contact with physical materials: stone, marble, wood, sea water, warm earth. These materials are present in the daily landscape and in our works of art. Mediterranean architecture bears witness to the relationship between man and his material environment. In all our countries, gastronomy is an art and a ritual. Food is not just a food, but a social and sensory act. Eating together involves a leisurely pace, a conversation, a pleasure of flavors. And we have the sea as an element of contemplation: it is not only a geographical space, but a symbol of depth and mystery, in contrast to the digital hypertransparency that eliminates all opacity and reflection.
• Manipulative algorithms and outsourced memory on digital servers weaken our ability to remember and build our identity. We need to reclaim the Mediterranean as a cradle of civilizations. Historically, we have been a place of stories, myths, art, philosophy and religion, where wisdom was transmitted through words and shared experience. This shows the importance of recovering slow conversation, the unhurried exchange of ideas, in contrast to the immediacy of social media and the overload of superficial information.
• Unlike the digital society that isolates us in personalized information bubbles and advocates "every man for himself" or the "law of the strongest", Mediterranean cultures, although they have been the scene of wars and power struggles, have developed a strong sense of community and hospitality. Our ports and large cities were and still are spaces of exchange and coexistence. Contrary to the homogenization imposed by globalization, Mediterranean hospitality has known and, we hope, will continue to know how to welcome others without assimilating them, while respecting their differences. Today, social networks create an illusion of connection that, in reality, reinforces individualism and sometimes a violence hidden in anonymity. However, our traditions have favored the agora, the square or public space as a place for debate and real coexistence.

In his book Contemplative Life, philosopher and essayist Byul-Chun Han points out that "the origin of culture is not war, but feasting." Feasting, understood as a communal celebration, is a manifestation of the productive inactivity that enriches human existence. This perspective finds a deep echo in our Mediterranean secular or religious traditions, where celebration and community occupy a central place.

Regarding the need for dialogue between cultures, Lebanese writer and activist Joumana Haddad stressed that “dialogue is not a luxury, but a tool for survival in a world that pushes us towards fragmentation.”

Pope Francis has also repeatedly stressed the importance of dialogue as a means of overcoming conflicts and building bridges between people and communities. In his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he states that “real and lasting peace is possible only through an ethic of dialogue and encounter.” According to Francis, dialogue must be patient, humble and disinterested, avoiding imposing one’s own vision and always seeking the common good. In this search for the common good, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, encourages us to work so that “the Mediterranean becomes a laboratory of fraternity, a place where differences are not an obstacle, but a richness.”

Dear friends, we must not be afraid of differences. A world without differences is neither possible nor desirable. God created diversity and entrusts us with the task of harmonizing it. This is the message of the Holy Scriptures, which runs counter to the uniformization of culture induced by globalization and dehumanized neoliberalism. We must globalize solidarity.

Some contemporary philosophers warn against this tendency towards cultural homogenization that we observe in the shopping streets of any city in the world: they all look the same. And the streets are only the tip of the iceberg of a homogenization of pre-programmed thought that already affects many young people and fellow citizens. Thus, for example, we observe among ordinary people the rise of the consumption of stories of rejection or fear of difference. Diversity is in crisis. In this process, the other disappears, the different becomes a domesticated and marketable version of itself.

The daughters and sons of the Catholic Church cannot be mere spectators of this cultural change; it has been part of our identity from the beginning to embrace harmony in differences and communion in diversity. In this context, we are challenged to resist the uniform cultural model by reclaiming the value of otherness. Let us not try to avoid or disguise differences, but to give them space and value them as part of the wealth and heritage of humanity that we find today as a microcosm in every city or country.

To achieve this, it will be essential to have an adequate educational system and the contribution of all religions as a factor of integration and social cohesion. The most destabilizing element of coexistence is not cultural difference, but poverty, lack of equal opportunities, lack of social justice, lack of access to education, work or decent housing in one's own country or in the country where one seeks a peaceful future. To meet this challenge, the social doctrine of the Church also sails against the current by proposing economic, political and social systems centered on the dignity of the human person and the common good. This is not very popular in the competitive jungle into which the dominant economic, political and communication system is leading us. But no one said that it was easy to be a Christian.

The crisis of otherness and its consequences for coexistence

I don't know what your experience is, but I feel that in recent years, perhaps since 2001, our societies are increasingly rejecting what they perceive as strange or as a challenge. We are not well if we perceive or associate difference with danger or threat. But let's not kid ourselves, our societies suffer more from aporophobia than from xenophobia.

In the midst of this panorama, the Church and the religions that inhabit the Mediterranean are called to recover and enhance “social friendship”, the “culture of encounter” that involves opening up to others without seeking to assimilate them. One of the factors that determines our era of change is migration, human mobility, which is often almost forced. It is not possible to have an idea of our era without migrants and refugees. The crew of the Bel Espoir will be able to experience hospitality in many ports and places. Migration and cultural diversity in our countries, cities and neighbourhoods offer the opportunity to practice, deepen and recreate hospitality as a resistance to hostility and prejudices reinforced by certain narratives and political interests around the world. These prejudices provoke emotions derived from social and cultural constructions, and therefore modifiable by appealing to faith, reason, education and the reasons of the heart.

The importance of encouraging young people to live experiences of cultural exchange and to be welcomed in countries and cultures other than their own. How important it is to share these experiences. Perhaps some of you are wondering if a proposal shared by all Abrahamic religions to promote coexistence in cultural diversity would be possible? We already have a roadmap for this, the Abu Dhabi Declaration signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb in 2019. But this roadmap, like so many other documents of reference and ethical or moral height, has not yet reached the grassroots, the communities, the mosques or churches, the streets. We will need convinced witnesses and ambassadors of human fraternity, world peace and common coexistence. We must be creative so that the dialogue between religious or cultural references can lead to a dialogue between neighbours, between neighbours in the neighbourhood, in the city, between neighbouring countries.

You will get to know cities where different religious or cultural communities share physical space, live together but interact little, and others where interaction is stronger. Listen and open your eyes and hearts to what is said and what is not said. Listen to the wounds and make them your own. Only in this way can you contribute to healing them and help us promote intercultural and interreligious dialogue and respect between all people, regardless of their faith or culture. Dear friends, it is urgent that our societies open up to the value of hospitality and to the growing “we” as a principle of humanization and a bridge between cultures and people.

We could list conflicts and affronts on the shores of the Mediterranean, but perhaps it is more important today to affirm and sing of hope.

There are already communities in our countries that pray, celebrate, live and prophesy God's dream in the face of what has been called "the globalization of indifference" (EG 54), that open the way and tell us all how it is possible to shape harmony in differences. This is the model and the way, we need many more. This is why you are setting sail. Practicing the culture of mutual acceptance has a transformative value for people, institutions and structures. It requires cultivating the virtue of patience, so necessary to initiate or accompany processes, knowing how to sow so that others may reap.

Towards a new form of intercultural coexistence

From the shores of the Mediterranean, our “Lake Tiberias” (La Pira), we should be able to take advantage of all the civil, cultural and religious forums, which are numerous, to create networks. We must be able to take advantage of all the civil, cultural and religious forums, and they are numerous, to create networks. There are already many good initiatives in many countries. We can draw inspiration from them within the Church and between religions. Let us renounce intellectual laziness and fatalism, which have also characterized certain moments in our history. We must continue to be creative. Let us row more inward. In this sense, the Catholic Church, with its mode of organization, offers a capillary presence in all territories and nations, capable of connecting dioceses, institutions, projects. She is able to sit together in conversation in the Spirit to offer to the world and to her fellow citizens what is most proper to Jesus Christ and to the experience of catholicity, of communion in diversity, of the harmonization of differences and tensions without fracture, because she has the vision of the greater good that brings together, gathers, heals and sends.

As another writer, the Lebanese Amin Maalouf, says, "the encounter with the other is not a threat, but an opportunity for growth."

Perhaps we need to rethink globalization together and rethink the Mediterranean region. Do it on the side of the victims and the most vulnerable. We can find in our ancestors the value of silence and contemplation to relearn how to listen and give space to otherness without rushing to judge or assimilate. If we want to have a future, we need to listen to young people and think about the world and the Mediterranean that we want to leave to future generations.

Finally, let me suggest that you place your adventure under the protection of Saint Charles de Foucauld. His example can illuminate the dialogue between cultures on the 5 shores of the Mediterranean in the following way:

1. welcoming and knowing the other: Charles de Foucauld spent a large part of his life in North Africa, particularly in the Sahara desert, with the Tuaregs. He came neither as a conqueror nor as a simple observer, but with the desire to understand their culture, learn their language and share their daily life. His attitude reminds us that the first step in dialogue is a deep knowledge of the other, without prejudice and open to the richness of his identity.
2. Fraternity and shared life: inspired by the spirituality of Nazareth, Foucauld wants to be a "universal brother". He does not seek to impose his faith, but to bear witness to it through a life of love, closeness and service. In a Mediterranean marked by religious and cultural tensions, his testimony reminds us that authentic fraternity does not seek to convert others, but to welcome them and love them in their dignity and diversity.
3. Interreligious dialogue: Although a Christian, Foucauld learned Islam, studied the Quran and dialogued with Muslims in a respectful manner. His attitude was not one of confrontation, but of listening and recognition of the presence of God in the other.
4. Building peace and reconciliation: Charles de Foucauld did not seek power or fame, but to be a sign of peace in the midst of a divided world. In these times of conflict in the Mediterranean region, his testimony invites us to work for justice and reconciliation, starting from the everyday and the simple, without waiting for grand political gestures, but trusting in the transformative power of love and friendship. Saint Charles de Foucauld leaves us a clear path for dialogue between cultures in the Mediterranean: learning from each other, living fraternity, dialoguing with respect, working for peace and being witnesses of faith from love and humility. In a world that needs bridges more than walls, your life continues to be a light for coexistence between peoples, religions and cultures.

Dear young people, dear crew, to quote Kavafis:

“When you set out on your journey to Ithaca

ask that the road be long,

full of adventures, full of experiences.

Fear neither the Laestrygonians nor the Cyclopes

nor the angry Poseidon.”

Do not be afraid, go Bel Espoir, may the Spirit of God be with you.