At Expo Dubai next autumn, the first major global event after the pandemic, Italy will animate and deepen the dialogue between cultures and religions with initiatives and events of international importance: a dialogue that in the United Arab Emirates has found in recent years a decisive point of development, from the signing - by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar - of the Document on Human Brotherhood of February 2019, to the turning point in relations with Israel sanctioned by the Abrahamic Agreements of last September.
"The union of diversities, the comparison of diversities, is the central, strategic element of the entire international, cultural, scientific, economic, but above all political-institutional and diplomatic agenda.
And the great meeting in Dubai captures the theme of this fragmented but at the same time interconnected world.
The culture of dialogue today needs great care, including the formation of a 'true' culture of dialogue, especially with the new generations ", explains the Italian Commissioner of the Dubai Expo, Paolo Glisenti, according to an ANSA Forum. which the great event, postponed for a year due to the pandemic, will have the task of "connecting minds, peoples, religions to promote dialogue in its spiritual, cultural, intergenerational and universal dimension". And it is the historian of religions Alberto Melloni to announce how, in an Expo whose theme is precisely 'Connecting Minds', it will be the Italian participation to propose a 'Connecting Souls' moment, connecting minds, immediately after a G20 will be held in Bologna at the G20 under the Italian presidency of religions, the Interfaith Forum.
"What we expect - he observes - is that it can be the place in which to show how between what is theological knowledge, between what is philosophical research and what is pragmatic action and the diplomatic and political dimension, can be a meeting point: you can find small things that can be written on the 'parva carta', with which you can transform the great horizon of utopia, without which the roof of the world will fall on your head, into those that will be concrete and representable results, capable of doing the good of individual human beings who today suffer, in that quadrant and elsewhere, from war ".
The thematic week of Expo Dubai on interreligious dialogue will culminate in the International Day of Tolerance on November 16, 2021, the flagship event of the entire semester of the Universal Exposition.
And on that occasion the Italy Pavilion will host the "Connecting Souls" forum, with the involvement of prominent personalities from the religious, political and cultural world from all over the world, who will discuss the efforts at a global level to promote peace, brotherhood, dialogue between peoples and religions.
And a crucial moment of the event will be a commemoration of women and men victims of aggression or terrorist attacks in places of worship (mosques, churches, synagogues, temples).
Furthermore, Unesco will also play a decisive role in the initiatives of the Italian Pavilion on the subject: the dimension of education is in fact a necessary condition for dialogue.
"At its constitution, 75 years ago it put at the center an educational project principle for a world to be rebuilt after the Second World War: to build peace in the minds of men. All situations of conflict are born in the minds of men, that's where we need act ", warns the deputy general manager Stefania Giannini.