In 2025, an odyssey of young people committed to peace in the Mediterranean

At the initiative of the Church of Marseille and part of the broader Mediterranean process initiated since 2020 by the Bari meeting, 200 young people, of all faiths and religions, involved in the civil society of their countries, will cast off from March 1 to October 26, 2025.

Delphine Allaire – Vatican City

Keeping the momentum of the Mediterranean Meetings afloat Sea of Nostrum. Literally and figuratively, this will be the mission entrusted to the “"Good Hope", a three-masted schooner designed as a training ship for peace, which will sail near the five shores during the Jubilee year. A fraternity in action in this year when the Pope calls everyone to be “pilgrim of hope”. The training ship will train these young people, aged 20 to 35, in the art of weaving links between cultures and religions of this Mediterranean area, a reflection of the crises and hopes of the time, to know its heritage in order to better face the challenges, whether educational, economic or migratory.

The port, a place of welcome and faith

The eight-month voyage could begin in Barcelona in the western Mediterranean to reach the Moroccan coast. The crew would stop in Algerian, Tunisian and Sicilian ports before reaching the East via Malta and Cyprus to reach Lebanon and Turkey. It will return to Italy via the Aegean Sea and the Adriatic before reaching Naples and its twin Marseille.

Following in the footsteps of countless Mediterranean pilgrims such as Saint Paul or Saint Mary Magdalene, he will sail with the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi, in search of peace. In each of the departure cities, a symposium will allow for the exploration of major questions, such as those of the "dialogue of cultures and religions", or those of ""education of young people" and of "the place of women in society", so many paths in the service of peace.

Towards the Mediterranean Ecclesial Conference

After the Marseille edition of the Mediterranean meetings In 2023, a next edition dedicated to young people will already be held in Tirana, the Albanian capital, from September 15 to 22, 2024. Its exceptional format in 2025, with the Odyssey of Bel Espoir, will accompany the life of this great Mediterranean network that the Pope calls for and for which he has entrusted responsibility to Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline since last April. Inspired by Repam, the Pan-Amazonian ecclesial network of nine countries covering the green lung of the planet, an ecclesial conference of the Mediterranean could thus gradually take shape, an idea proposed by Pope Francis at the closing of the Marseille Meetings on September 21, 2023.