"We need to raise our voices to heaven together."

In Bari, when the young people of session 7 arrived, Giuseppe Satriano, Archbishop of Bari-Bitonto, introduced the group to a moment of ecumenical prayer. 

" Siblings,

Dear young people, dear friends from different nations and religious traditions,

This evening we gather around the precious gift of prayer, which unites us beyond languages, cultures and affiliations. The ship Beautiful Hope – La Belle Espérance, arriving in Bari, is not just a sailboat: it is a prophetic sign that speaks of fraternity, sharing, and the future. It is a “navigating” laboratory that crosses the Mediterranean, transforming it from a wall into a bridge, from a sea of divisions into a sea of encounter and reconciliation.

Today more than ever, we need to raise our voices to heaven together, invoking peace as a gift beyond us, born not of human will alone but of God's grace. Peace is a fragile seed, continually threatened: we see it compromised when the right of peoples to exist is trampled upon, when international law is ignored and violated, when indifference and violence leave the cry of the poor and innocent on sea and land.

In this dramatic setting, you, young people, are a living hope for us. Through your journey, through your choice to live together as fellow travelers, you show us that fraternity and sharing are the best ways to build peace. You are not naive, you are courageous: you carry within you the dream of a different world and you remind us that peace is not a utopia, but a task to be built day after day.

Our prayer this evening gathers together diverse voices: voices that rise from the Mediterranean and become a chorus, a common invocation. Different religions, different cultures, different nations: all converge in a single supplication, towards the one God, in a single desire, that of invoking peace for the world. This is the universal language of humanity, to which God always listens with predilection.

Bari and Saint Nicholas, the patron saint who unites East and West, welcome you with a warm embrace. Our city, which holds in its heart the vocation of bridge and dialogue, desires to continue to be a city of peace, capable of preserving and multiplying the seeds we sow together this evening.

We are hungry for God and for brotherhood, for relationships that give us back the desire to walk together. This conflict, which is bloodying the Holy Land of Jesus, along with all the wars going on in the world, cries out, and cries out within us: enough, enough, enough!

Let us return to the essentials of life, knowing how to give back to God life, the dignity of man, of every man.

Let us return to cultivating modesty, discretion, and recognition for the gift that each person represents.

Let us renounce all forms of power over others. Let us adopt the logic of service and care, and we will see peace flourish; we will rediscover the merciful gaze of God who, in Christ, gives us peace.

Let us then allow ourselves to be guided by silence, by words, by song, so that this moment is not only a celebration but a renewed commitment: a commitment to be, each in his or her own context, a builder of peace, a witness of hope, an artisan of fraternity.

+ Giuseppe Satriano Archbishop of Bari-Bitonto