Fourth Centenary of Matteo Ricci’s death
“First global citizen”, “Pioneer of cultural and religious dialogue”, “Missionary who found the way to proclaim the Good News in term of a civilization alien to the influence of the West”: these are some of the titles by which Matteo Ricci is known. To celebrate the fourth centenary of his death, which will occur in the year 2010, a program of conferences to be held in Rome and Beijing is already under way. In Macerata, his native city, the celebration is more ambitious. The provisional program lists 22 projects with a budget of € 2.650.000,00.
Cardinal Martini on Paul VI
The presentation of a book which gathers the writings of Cardinal Martini on Pope Paul VI, (both former Archbishops of Milan) took place on October 3 at Centro Culturale San Fedele in Milan. The auditorium of the center was not sufficient to accommodate all the people who came to hear the Cardinal, and it was necessary to televise his talk in an anteroom. The talk was well covered in the Italian Press.
The audience followed with great attention the account of the relationship between Martini and Paul VI (“he was for me like a father”, said Martini) and was visibly moved when the Cardinal commented what Paul VI had written about his own death. A text, said Martini, written several years before the Pope died when he considered his death, of course, unavoidable but not imminent. A text, confessed the Cardinal, that he would hesitate to sign himself because it was “too beautiful, marvelous, lyric…I am also confronting my inevitable death but contrary to Paul VI, for me it is imminent: I am in the last waiting room. I have turned to the Lord lamenting that his death and resurrection have not eliminated our unavoidable death. It would be so beautiful to be able to say: “Jesus has confronted his death in order to make it possible for us to walk towards Paradise on a rosy path…Instead, God wants us to experience the fear of passing through the dire strait of death and obscurity…In front of the inevitable fact of our death I recovered the peace of heart when I realized that without death in the horizon we would not be capable of an act of complete trust in God without the possibility of any escape door…What death imposes on us is a definite act of trust…We desire to be with Jesus and we express this desire by closing our eyes and blindly leaving everything into his hands…”
People were moved and realized that even though Parkinson disease has forced Cardinal Martini to leave behind his loved Jerusalem, his mind remains lucid and his words powerful.