Introduction

 The Biblical-Theological reflection that Don Paolo Giannoni has offered us at the opening of out 51^st Assembly, has wisely introduced us in into the theme around which our attention, our interest and the life of our Congregations are going to converge during these days.

To me, as I have already told you with my introducing  words,  there are three nuclei that, at this time, seem to constitute the needle's eye which the religious life in Italy will have to pass through:

-          to live Hope so that it may be visible and may be lived in a runaway world (see the

Gospel of Hope for Europe, Synod of the Bishops, 21^st October 1999);

-          to choose the inter-exchange, as an overcoming of our protective enclosures and our

securities;

-          to live the history of today's man, the history of a migrating humanity, as a place of

Salvation.

These are three aspects that, in the preparation iter towards the Assembly, have emerged as constants, as lights that the religious life can offer to the appeals coming from everywhere, as "signs" of its prophetic mission, at the beginning of this new millennium.

The phenomenon of the "ethnic mobility", of the "immigrations" and consequent problems concerning the insertion, the integration, the promotion and the development, have found and keep on finding a noteworthy interest and attention on behalf of very numerous associations and humanitarian organisms, meant to satisfy the primary needs of the immigrants (refugees, clandestine people,  residents from  other Countries).

We, too, as religious, are present in this front and at the same time we perceive the urgency of being more attentive to the person,  to its dignity, to its primary physical and spiritual needs, not to forget that each person and the whole creation are immersed into the Love project of God the Father for mankind.

 This is not the first time that we face the theme of mobility and of changes as a result of the globalisation

The 46^th Assembly of the Usmi, the first of the previous five years, already brought to focus the same problem, though seen from different angles of view:

"Religious life towards a new age-"to die and to be born afresh from above";

"Which social and spiritual challenges does our changing world face before the women and the women religious in particular?"

It is, therefore, allowed to ask ourselves: repetition or a broader reading and answering?

By reading again the two fundamental reports of the above mentioned Assembly, it is clear that it was about opening a common course of reflection and exchange on the problem of changes within and without the Congregations, to start a journey towards new forms of solidarity.

In the previous quinquennium we have run a tract of journey about which I gave a report last year, in the Assembly, at the end of the mandate.

Now we open a new stage that brings to focus a further perspective: every solidarity demands a soul, requires that hope be made visible, a hope that gives sense to everything.

"You are called and sent to proclaim, to celebrate and to serve the Gospel of hope":  this is the mandate of the Bishops to the Christians in Europe, a mandate that, as religious, we want to treasure up in this moment of much insecurity and instability for very many brothers and sisters.

We are before a mass mobility: a result of "mondialisation" and globalisation, accelerated by the high speed of the technical, telematic, mediatic communication.

A mobility that constitutes a "hard necessity", imposed by the need of seeking outside one's own Country, mined by calamities and wars, a bit of peace, of security and life stability.

Before these problems, we are solicited to recuperate a new ecclesial-communitarian awareness that sends us back to the constitutive truth of the person, of its dignity as a child of God, everywhere and anyhow, loved and saved in Jesus Christ.

Open to the inter- exchange in and among the Congregations. 

This is a challenge that imposes itself also because of the situation we live in: decrease and scarcity of the religious personnel, which makes the replacement ever more difficult and sometimes impossible. Plunged into the whirling flux of the ageing and the changes, which reflects the most general condition of our Country and of Europe, we feel urged to seek together and to indicate the effective possibilities of the "inter- exchange" we are called to.

We start this new journey solicited also by the expressions of Giovanni Paolo II in his post-synod Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa:

"The Church is aware of the specific contribution of the women to the Gospel of hope. The events of the Christian community testify how the women have a relevant place in the Gospel testimony".

"It is worth remembering all that they have done, often in silence and a hiding attitude, by welcoming and transmitting the gift of God through physical or spiritual motherhood, educational activities, catechesis, realisations of great works of charity, as well as through their prayer life, contemplation, mystical experiences and writings,  rich in evangelical wisdom" (No.42).

1.      The religious life in Italy, in the changing flux

A gaze on Italy "a Country of immigration in a world of migrants".

A complete panorama on this phenomenon was recently presented by Caritas-Migrantes, through the statistic Dossier of immigration 2003: "Italy, a Country of immigration" - XIII Report on immigration.

      I shall take back to this context some declarations which will help us catch some particular aspects, useful to understand better the situation we live in.

      To state that Italy is a Country of immigration in a world of migrants may sound a banality and, instead, it is mostly an awareness to be acquired.

      The excuse that we are a country of only a recent experience in this field, cannot continue to be valid,  if we consider that the flux of immigration, as a mass phenomenon, which started in the year '70, began to be known in the first years of '80: according to the fast rhythms of today's world, thirty years are a lot.

      Moreover, it is no longer an emergency phenomenon, but rather a structural dimension of our society;  on behalf of the politicians, the administrators and the social workers, this supposes a deeper and a more far-sighted concept, the only one that allows to face a theme which is already complex in itself.

      The Dossier Statistic Immigration 2003, realised with the collaboration of prestigious international, national, territorial structures, and through the use of available Archives, puts us before a rigorous analysis of the immigration shape.

      Through the Dossier we come to know:

      the European and international context

      the number of foreigners in Italy

      their socio-cultural integration

      the world of work

      the regional contexts

      the special file dedicated to the refugees

It is indispensable that these pieces of knowledge be inserted into the circuit of sensibilisation, so that the image of the immigrated may be perceived in its concrete dimension and freed from prejudices.

Some meaningful numbers, useful to orient our knowledge and our service 

About the presence of foreigners in Italy, the most numerous nationality remains that of the Moroccan (172.834  with residence permit, equal to 11,4% of the total), which slightly precedes  that of the Albanians (11,2%), whose more consistent exodus seems to have been verified. The Romaine group comes third (95.834), followed by the Philippines (65.257) and the Chinese (62.314).

The motives of entry: work and family rejoining .

Some emerging problems: the children of immigrates at school: everybody's right to health;

the religious belonging: faith to be lived for and not against others;  incentives for ways of legality.

Some Caritas proposals (10 points) to realise a survival project, "There can't be an alternative to the one that recognises the immigrates at par dignity, in duties and rights, and offers them concrete possibilities to live actively the social and spiritual adventure of the Country and of the European Union".

Ethnic mobility or immigration?

The ethnic mobility and the phenomenon of immigration are the clearest consequences of a changed era which goes on assuming ever ampler dimensions, spreading even to the most anonymous angles of the planet. Seen in this perspective, to speak of immigration today is to use an ever less adequate expression, before a phenomenon that characterises itself, rather than as a world circulation of persons.

The basic reasons of this reversal of perspective are evident: it is calculated that at least 200 million of persons per year circulate around the world, in search of more tranquil, stable, secure spaces.

Some of the most shrewd demographers speak of a sixth continent, destined to spread ever more in the heart of the third millennium. This process that will acquire ever more dynamism, will be remembered in history as the global age.

We may say that the push to the circulation is irreversible because of two great revolutions that are taking place in the so called "Third world": the strong fall of the infants mortality, the fabulously grown expectation of life, of life quality  and the ever more elevated middle age. (See: E.J. Serrano, UCSEI).

Near the meaningful component of the migratory process that records a high percentage of youths, the female component is almost half of the immigrated population.

Moreover, an element that may change the parameters of reading is the migratory phenomenon within the European Countries, in an ever more enlarged United Europe.

Even in this context, there is the need of facing seriously the cultural and spiritual relation-confrontation between East and West,  Eastern and Western Europe, supposed to be the "two lungs" of Europe.

From "tolerance" to "conviviality

The pluralistic context of our society urges us, today, to develop our concept of tolerance. It is no longer enough to cohabit with what is different, we must rather co-operate with it.

The anthropological foundations, that push men to live together, take roots more into positive reasons than on the will of avoiding wars or other risks and dangers.

Knowing and recognising the contribution of all the civilisations to the human thought, to reason and to the positive sciences, is the essential starting point for an inter-cultural education capable of relating the similarities among themselves (the particular belongings which distinguish us).

It is extremely necessary to educate ourselves to relation, by developing and supporting, in our interpersonal and inter-community relations,  the re-discovery of the alterity, as a relation to be built and not as a barrier to flee away from and to defend ourselves against (Levy-Strauss): to educate ourselves to a critical spirit about our own particular identities (religious, national, ethnic) and to their relativity with reference to the universality, understood as a belonging to ampler spaces: man, his dignity and fundamental rights (See: L. Principe, director CIEMI- Paris).

How to accept, and to integrate positively,  the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural diversity of the different European societies?

Almost half immigrants not coming from the European Union is Muslim: about 7 million of persons, essentially from the Maghreb, from Turkey and from Pakistan. Approximately 70% of them live in three Countries: Germany (the Turks), France (from Maghreb) and England (Pakistanis).

Among the 30 most important communities living in the 15 Countries of the European Union, five communities (Turk, ex-Yugoslavs, Italians, Portuguese and Moroccans) form 40% of foreigners in Europe.

Europe, as a multi-cultural society, acknowledges that "a political integrated society" presupposes always the acceptance:

-          of common rules of communication (the language or languages);

-          of a common Juridical System;

-          of a constant commitment to intercultural education.

The intercultural education regards all the members of a society and not only the foreigner:

in a context of multiple cultural references it is urgent to re-think the notions to be transmitted, the capacities to be developed and the values to be promoted, to be able to put the identities and the belongings (ethnic, national, religious, linguistic, territorial …) in relation with the universal vocation of man (reason, freedom of conscience, fundamental rights).

The modality of the female religious life within the ethnic mobility

The prophecy of the female religious life: to be close to every people, culture and religion.

A life "radically donated" because of the Gospel is in the best disposition and condition to be and to act as a bridge with every immigrated person and with the civil as well with the ecclesial community offering hospitality.

As religious "in mission for the Kingdom" (To start afresh from Christ, No.9) we are called to live the mobility as an expression and a witness of a free and universal love (each man is my brother), as well as of God's primacy in our life:  our security is not tied up to a personally chosen place, but to the one shown to us by the obedience we have chosen to live.

The modality lived for Christ and for the Gospel renders us poor in bonds, places us in the situation of not rooting ourselves anywhere, in the condition of better understanding our immigrated brother closer and of reminding the world that every man has a deeper root than that of his own land: it is the root into the heart of God,  our Father and Creator.

Such a mobility condition makes us more dynamic, more open and flexible even in our service. I think that all of us have had the chance of experiencing how the need of adapting our apostolic service to the different situations of time and place, makes us more vital and "nearer".

In the context of the migratory phenomenon of our Country, the religious institutes are passing from interventions of first welcome,  meeting  the conditions of poverty and insecurity of the immigrants, thus stimulating other social forces  (groups of solidarity, public political and administration groups), to interventions of secondary welcome, namely supports to the integration of persons (formation, language, promotion of associations, family rejoining…) and the rehabilitation of the personal dignity.

Health, dignity, love and peace can flourish only where there is welcome, solicitude, solidarity and justice.

This urges us to go on assuming the ethics of solicitude, of solidarity, of listening and sheltering of people, particularly of those who are apparently "useless".

Within this weft of relations, every living being is unique, carrying in himself God's image and the fruit of countless years of creative work of humanity and of the universe. To go on developing this way of becoming is to collaborate in the fulfilment of creation, giving sense to one's own existence in "communion" with our brothers and sisters (see: A. Marrone).

To profess our hope: namely to say that man is a creature of God. The phenomenon of globalisation is producing, on one side, a general cultural omologation, on the other side, often immeasurable reactions of refusal.

Ours is a contradictory time: while history leads us to a re-thinking of man, from an individual as such to a being  "in relation", open to the other (we are beings for others and not only for ourselves), in the world,  an annulment of the man's value,  of his identity, of his person and of the group is going on: there is a process of a fearfully inhumane activity that goes on impoverishing man himself.

Just because of this we need to remember, today, that the Gospel is a good news of hope: The Christian hope reveals to the world that Christ is the true answer to every man.

Living the theological virtue of hope means to orient the change towards a spiritual end; it means to give it a soul, to announce that each man is a creature of God, that his becoming and his fulfilment are realised in the saving project of the Father.

Hope cannot be identified with a simple attitude of optimism or of trusting in life, or with the expectation of something that will be realised or will be given in future: to hope is to believe that the final resurrection starts over here, every day: to collaborate in making the resurrection be possible within every cross of man;  to recognise that man and creation have their origin in God and that to Him they shall return.

To profess hope helps us to express, in our concrete daily life, some attitudes capable of creating nearness, welcome, sense of belonging and of family:

-          all of us share the same human vicissitudes and bear the same dignity, though

with different gifts;

-          we believe that beyond the skin colour, beyond the race, the culture, the faith, it is

possible to encounter the other starting from our own reality of human beings: we are all children of the same God, though we call him with different names; we are brothers and sisters among ourselves because we partake in the same human vicissitude: equal in dignity.

-          Today, however, we are witnessing how this truth keeps on being threatened  and how

man  is terribly mined, along with his deepest values: life in its birth, its developing and its death: the identity and dignity of the person; the sense of responsibility; the respect and the acceptance of the other, particularly of the weaker and frailer.

-          Christian hope helps us in recuperating the bond of kinship with God and to remind

 today's man of the blessing sight of a God who has fallen in love with his creatures: "God saw what he had done, and, it was a very good thing".

2.      The generation exchange and inter-exchange in the female religious Congregations of Italy

Whether "to act" or to undergo the change.

The challenge that waits for us today, is not in asking whether the actual religious life will have a future or not: we know, in fact, that this is in God's hands, but in verifying our attitude before the real change of the age and in asking ourselves whether we do have such  a faith as enables us to see the "semina Dei" in our time,  and to accept this hour as a time wanted by God for us.

Almost all the Congregations in Italy and in Europe are experiencing a dramatic fall in personnel and the ever higher number of elderly and sick sisters. This becomes more critical because of the lack of vocations, made even more complex by the fear of a lack of permanent commitment, by the fatigue of entering in dialogue with the youths who join our Institutes, besides the somehow impoverished vision  of the religious.

This painful reality hits its counterstroke against the closing of our apostolic works and communities, with the consequence that the sisters are always less present and religious life becomes less visible

Tensions exist in the inter-generation relations, and difficulties are experienced in international Congregations, due to the different ways of conceiving religious life in the various continents. The urgency of a dialogue on this matter derives from all this.

During the past ten years, many Diocesan local Congregations have had to take into account the international dimension without any adequate preparation. Other Congregations find themselves before a majority of young sisters from other Countries. They have no possibility of going deep into their culture in view of a serious inter-exchange. This is due mostly to age reasons, the general lines of formation and of the Congregation Government itself.

Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that the young women from the Countries of East Europe, are easily homologated during the formation journey of the Italian ones and, thus, neglected in their cultural and religious specificity.

The change of style and mentality before these problems does not mean only an acceptance of the change, but requires also to live it, that is to initiate ourselves to it and to initiate it. From the initiation rites we learn that the signs render the perceived reality visible, the reality we intend to express. (See: UISG, No. 116/2001, p. 101 and following.)

Initiation to the change

The most difficult change to realise does not concern the distance, the difference of places or professions; in other words, it is not a reaching geographically distant places, but rather reaching farther in humanity, even by running the risk,  notwithstanding our limits and numerical reduction, of seeking gropingly concrete tracks and actions which allow us to start common journeys of solidarity, thus crediting the values of communion and of the prophetic mission of religious life.

Which gestures or choices can start the initiation to a change in our Institutes? Which courses of hope does the activation of a community require?

The community is the place in which faith is generated in the daily life; it is the concrete space in which we help and forgive ourselves reciprocally; the place of communion which is built by a slow "healing of the wounds"  that sometimes we inflict to one another with our differences themselves.

All of us are asked to get ready for an inter-cultural confrontation, the true one, at par, rather in situations of minority.

The need is felt of intercultural dialogue that requires commitment and availability on behalf of the religious life, a privileged place for the integration of the diversities, that could affect positively also the actual modern society.

Above all, an interior denial is required, the capacity of losing something of oneself so that dialogue may be realised and communion may grow.

In a wider horizon, at ecclesial and social level, we should, moreover, welcome the idea that our Western world is going to exhaust  "its answers" that, anyhow, have not always generated in the world the true well-being and positive state of things, but rather strong conflicts and contradictions.

Other people: Latin-Americans, Africans, from the far-East, are opening themselves to the international horizon, capable of offering to the world their solutions, surely different from ours.

The Western age is almost to be over and a new one is going to open: that of the people in

 the South of the world. It would be of no use to react against this process by blocking it; it would rather be good to study it, to deepen it with more voices, to understand how to enter this new multiethnic and inter-religious scenario actively and not passively,  getting ready to face it without big traumas.

It will be necessary, above all, to learn the "grammar of relations, the code of communion" which do not exclude each other, but integrate the differences.

To read our history with evangelical hope.

Every change in our religious life will be destined to be only an image, unless it be realised in the listening to the Holy Spirit. We could, otherwise, live the compromise of the change, allow ourselves to be guided by the challenges of the world, facing the challenges, living given Gospel values, without the Gospel. Just as if it were possible to live as new men without the Holy Spirit, as redeemed without the Redeemer, Christians without Christ.

The passage from ideas to a religious experience, to a spiritual deep dimension, remains certainly difficult and demands a long journey.

According to the experience of the first evangelisation, two things are required so that the process of change may not remain an isolated phenomenon and may not finish by being extinguished:

-          the experience of Church in the authentic sense of the term, namely of a spiritual and

 cultural community, yet human, concrete, daily, and the reflection on such experience within the co-ordinated of memory and tradition;

-          the need of elaborating one's own religious, political and moral ideas through a serious

 commitment to spiritual life.

Which one is the archetype idea of your values? The Gospel one? Do we profess this conviction of ours or do we let it be understood?

Often in the religious world it happens that, in setting on a spiritual journey, we are stopped by the fear of dogmas , by the fear of using violence on the freedom of the other, and so on and so forth;  these are feelings that denounce a mentality used to reason more in terms of concepts and forms, than in terms of spiritual life.

An integral spiritual sight demands a pneumatology dimension, namely a reference to the Holy Spirit as a starting point for the understanding of man.

A pastoral approach that wants to meet the whole man, cannot leave out of consideration the experience of the redemption of the sinful man.

Thus, the  evangelisation, that wants to help the growth in faith, must be such as to promote the love of God more than anything else, together with the love of all whom He loves, with His own love (See: M.J. Rupnik, At the banquet of Bethany, ed. Lipa, Rome 2004, p- 22-32).

The experience of the love and forgiveness of God is a source of humility and of audacity: this is our true strength in future.

As religious, we are ever more solicited to present "the female face of God", to mobilise ourselves for his justice, as women who have contacted their own vulnerability and God's mercy, for which they can better understand the frailty of the other.

The religious life carries with itself gifts of therapy to heal the soul, the body and solitude: it offers places in which the person can recover, can find itself once again and live the hope.

Leadership formation in the Institutes: guiding the change, as an experience of hope and prophecy.

Through some exchanges and the acquisition of cognitive elements, it seems to me that I can catch with a certain evidence that the religious are no longer considered simply in function of the service they offer; in this perspective, in fact, the religious life has nothing indispensable that could not be replaced by other socio-educating  organisms. Religious life is rather a gift of God to the history of all times. Therefore, thinking of it with the grateful attitude nourished before a gift, is a source of freedom.

We cannot, however, ignore that there are still institutional and social obligations: the demography, the works to be managed and transmitted to others, the elevated number of aged sisters, are all obligations to be faced.  Even if this may be at times heavy and also crashing under certain aspects, it is always a precise task to be fulfilled, mostly inherited by the management of the preceding period.

Our mission,  as responsible persons, lies, first of all, in cultivating the coherence between the experience of what we have savoured, with the Word and the Life, along with the capacity of manifesting it with our works. We are called to keep and to favour the growth of the spiritual patrimony of our Institutes,  and of the single sisters, but also to wait patiently for the harvesting time and to safeguard the fruits; to act and to let the Spirit act in us, to allow him to work through us the change that history expects from us.

In this perspective there is the need of a spiritual government that may assume with an evangelical style the most meaningful aspects of the service of authority.

Leadership and spiritual government

Having been born in an age characterised by a style in which the power of one person was exercised on other persons, without the possibility of any appeal, we know what an authoritarian Government means.

We, too, for a certain period, have got used to oppose authority to leadership. It was not rare, in fact, to hear, "A person may have the mandate of authority without that of leadership, and vice versa". In the near past, authority was a synonymous of power, while the leadership was linked with the sphere of influence, of inspiration.

If it is true that authority is called to recompose life, to favour the growth of the persons, to consolidate the interior energies,  but it is equally true that this is possible only if our communities know how to integrate the need of an external authority with the experience of an authentic interior one.

A leadership is prophetic in the measure in which it expresses the vision of a future, a shared and creative one, full of hope. Hope is a fundamental dimension: it means to believe always in a future capable of singing the wonders of God, open to ever newer possibilities, capable of cultivating dreams.

I think that the trap,  which actually deceives the leaders of communities, is that of letting ourselves be absorbed by the daily contingencies which root us to the ground. He who does not cultivate dreams, finds it difficult to help others.

How can we help other people to dream, if we ourselves do not know how to dream?

A clever politician loved to quote the following expression, "Reasonable persons have resisted. The passionate ones have lived".

Shared leadership  

Nobody can succeed as a prophetic leader by being all alone; a true leader is "inter-dependent" , in synergy with other persons. I am personally very much convinced that the model to be privileged today is that of a shared leadership.

An image that, because of few aspects, may help us catch the meaning of this model is the V shaped flight of the migrating birds.

Out of metaphor, the persons who walk together towards the same direction, reach the objective more speedily and easily. The members of the equip that can dream together of something great, make the impossible to be possible, thus discovering the pleasure of sharing.

There is the  challenge of developing an organisation that may correspond to a "collective we", ready to walk towards the same direction. (UISG No. 124, 2004, p. 40 and foll.).

The inter-exchange at various levels: inter-congregational, international, intercultural

The challenge of the inter-exchange and inter-dependence may turn into competition, pre-dominion, disappearance of the weaker collective subject, abuse of power, if it is not inspired by the evangelical criteria of recognition from above, by the force of weakness, by the greatness of the littleness.

Modern life itself pushes us to inter-dependence. We have hardly come out of dependence and of independence, when already our future action finds us inserted in the nets, in the "partenariati".

To work out a passage of quality means to play, in this journey of autonomy, the coherence between efficacy and self-emptiness: a new form of obedience which we are called  to open to.

There are only two words of comment in the forum on the three thematic areas of the Assembly. It has recorded the attention paid to the inter-congregational dimension, while the inter-cultural aspect and the challenge of the inter-religious dialogue have been paid less interest.

However, I take into consideration the received contributions and those that will come from the group-work, a good opportunity to offer this Assembly of major superiors, some concrete indications on the evidenced nuclei.

The international dimension in Italy: signs of communion and of a new presence.

The Congregations in Italy have started experiences of inter-exchange, since a few years, at the level of charisms sharing and collaboration in some works and services; moreover, they have realised the change (almost induced) of their own physiognomy : from local or national Institutes to international Institutes, owing to the presence of the youths from the European  Countries, and/or other Countries.

From the USMI observatory, we catch that the inter-exchange for which the Congregations seem to be better prepared,  concerns the sharing at the level of charisms and the formation of inter-congregational communities in places of frontier or in emergency situations.

To this regard, the requests made to the USMI are quite meaningful (almost ten of them), by small Congregations that ask to be put in contact with Congregations having an affinity of charism, to the end of studying the possibility of a federation,  or an inter-exchange of formation or of union. To this end, indications have been offered; some encounters have taken place, though we do not know about the result of the journey.

Collaborations with traditional works are harder: schools, homes, where the inter-congregational presence is less meaningful, because of functions and tasks parallel to those of any other lay personnel.

Because of the flexibility of the structures and the emerging problems, it is easier instead the  presence of various institutes in the works of social assistance or first aid: services of sheltering, participation and support to initiatives denouncing situations of injustices, violation of the dignity of the person and every human right.

An attentive analysis evidences that the religious in Italy have landed in their being inter-congregational, solicited by the necessity to continue their presence and to offer their service. I have not heard yet anything about inter-congregational experiences thought and sought as sharing of a common charism of "consecration", which allows to create for the Congregations themselves, so very much reduced in number, better conditions of life at community level, of spiritual animation and sanitary assistance.

There are, however, other experiences at this level in other states of Western Europe.

The same international reality is a datus of facts, more than a choice, for several Italian Congregations. It remains as a choice the decision of moving to other countries for the spreading of the charism, to increase vocations, but once overcome this moment, the presence of sisters from other Countries, where the Congregation has not been present for a long time, would require a note-worthy cultural and spiritual commitment,  not to create parallel groups within our Congregations.

The diversity of culture, indeed, is note-worthy also at European level.

The study of cultures and the direct knowledge of the various Countries, more than an exigency, are a duty for the Superiors and their Councils,  so that the Congregation may be enriched not only numerically, but above all with those cultural human and spiritual values that the sisters from other cultures carry with themselves.

The women religious life in Italy and the inter-exchange East-West Europe

From different meetings of the Major Superiors Conferences, at European level, I have always carried with me the impression that:  the position, the composition, the experience of religious life has certainly something to say, to propose, to offer in order to favour the inter-exchange of spiritual gifts between East and West Europe.

Among the Conferences, Italy is still the most numerous, able, therefore, to offer material and spiritual resources, to start a concrete itinerary towards the knowledge of cultures and spirituality that are closer to us: those of the Eastern world.

While the unity of Europe is being made at economic monetary level, I think that the religious in Italy can find the way,  not only of transplanting themselves to East Europe, but also of giving a start to laboratories of knowledge and inter-exchange to the end of growing towards a reciprocal sharing of ideals and spiritual gifts, grasping the opportunity of the circular presence and of the centres already existing in our Country.

John Paul II, in his apostolic letter Orientale lumen (1995), written for the centenary of the Orientalium dignitatis by Leo XIII (1894), insists very much on the need "to meet, to know each other, to work together between the brothers in the East and in the West".

Even on this I perceive the exigency of thinking together something that may render us able of proposing and of opening our communities to a reciprocal exchange  of cultural and spiritual gifts.

A cultural and spiritual turning in the initial and permanent formation of the Congregations.

 The external context and the situation of our Congregations demand that the language of our initial and permanent formation be no longer exclusively mono-cultural. It is not so much a challenge, as a grave problem that could negatively affect the future of our Congregations.

The intervention of Fr. M.J. Rupnik during last year's assembly,  "Europe, a crossing of spirituality and cultures:  the possibility for the religious life", invited us to re-think some of our attitudes and to have the courage of revising the content of our faith  (see: Consacrazione e servizio No. 7/8, 2003, p.107).

The re-thinking of attitudes and contents, which at heart level we call conversion, cannot happen merely with our own will. To inhabit today's history demands openness to the internal and external mobility, to the re-elaboration of those principles and contents that have been our certainties so far and that now may risk to become our cages or enclosures.

The talks among groups of sisters, the contents of our community meetings, our prayer-style, the rhythms and the community time tables are no longer aspects good for everybody.. However, they are not to be neglected.

The difficult and patient animation of the dialogue, of confrontation, of bringing to knowledge other modalities and rhythms, pertains to the superior, so that the discernment may not be done with criteria valid only for the Italian sisters, but for all who are present.

The points of agreement will be always less, but essential and fundamental; the diversity of praxis and purely external modality will increase: furniture, menu, modality of prayer, of music …

To welcome and to accompany the acceptance of these apparently marginal differences requires a deep change of vision, of opening, of availability "to lose in order to gain".

Conclusions

To conclude this reading of our reality, I prefer not to anticipate any preferential orientation of the evidenced aspects or concrete journey. They will surely emerge from the works of this Assembly; I like, however, to strengthen inwardly our attention by calling back to mind the Biblical icon of Ruth, the Moabite (Ruth, 1, 8-19), who may be considered as the female version of Abraham who hoped against hope.

Because of her faith and her courage, Ruth is a woman and an icon of the theological hope. She, too, leaves behind her country of origin, Moab, to follow Noemi and her God: "Your God will be my God. I shall go wherever you go".

In an act of gratuitous love and trustful surrender, she moves towards the unknown and insecurity. She hopes even when Noemi, in order to dissuade her, tells her that she will not be able to bear other children in her womb to be offered to her.

Ruth is a migrant who leaves her motherland for a foreign and, perhaps, hostile country. Yet her faith and her hope are stronger.

She is a foreigner in Israel, she is so poor as to go gleaning for the survival of her mother-in-law and of her own, just like the poor who are not given even the dignity of working.

But her courage and her capacity of risking, her humility and, not least, her beauty, make of her an attractive icon of hope.

The beauty of Ruth expresses the theological meaning of salvation, because it is a life entrusted to the care of God.

Ruth hopes against hope and becomes fecund of life: it is she who starts afresh the salvation history that had been blocked by a serious famine of bread as well as of prophecy and hope.

David, our ancestor, was born from her and Boaz: Matthew, the evangelist, enlists her in the genealogy of Jesus, the Saviour.

Let us allow this icon to inspire us with a new courage for a journey of prophecy and hope.