Education as a Key Policy for Inter-Faith Dialogue A Lecture by Senator Linda Lanzillotta, Vice President of the Italian Senate

(Rome; March 31st - April 3rd, 2014)

Biography

Linda Lanzillotta is both a manager and scholar. From 1970 to 1982 she worked at the Ministry of Budgeting and Economic Planning. She was a member of the Rome City Council between 1997 and 1999, and served as the Secretary General to the Prime Minister’s office for one year between 2000 and 2001. She was a faculty member at the Roma III University from 2001 to 2005. 

She was elected Minister for Regional Affairs and Local Communities in the cabinet led by Prime Minister Romano Prodi in May, 2006, where she stayed until 2008. She was a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the Alliance for Italy, and became a member of the Italian senate in February, 2013 and she is currently serving as the vice-president of the senate.

In addition, she is the founder and president of GLOCUS, an independent think-tank which she established in 2007 to promote reformist policies in Italy.

Education as a Key Policy for Inter-Faith Dialogue

A Lecture by Senator Linda Lanzillotta, Vice President of the Italian Sentat

Ladies and gentlemen,

good morning and welcome!

I would like to say at the very outset that the Senate is proud to host a session of this important Symposium, and to do so in such a historic setting.

I would like to thank the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy for inviting me and to thank you – also on behalf of the President of the Senate – for choosing to hold today's meeting in the Italian parliament. There is, I believe, a substantive reason why an important international conference on inter-faith dialogue is being hosted in the Senate. In our globalised world, inter-faith dialogue is a tool to build peace among peoples at international level, and – at the same time – to build security and social cohesion within individual countries. For this reason, construction of inter-faith dialogue is not a topic that can be confined to religious institutions: it should be the focus of policy-making and political action.

Starting from the year 2000, events have taken place which have changed the way life is led over this planet: the globalization of commodities and financial markets and the wider availability of technologies and the Internet have ushered in a new era. In the new millennium, the life-styles of seven billion people (the total number of the earth's population) are changing and for many of us considerable changes have already taken place. Globalisation has brought about sweeping social, environmental, economic and population changes. Italy is affected by these radical changes and, like the rest of Europe, is also a key player.

The Mediterranean Sea is the mare nostrum bordering countries with different cultures and religions. Historically, the Mediterranean was an area of contamination and intercultural integration, an integration which all too often in our history was the outcome of bloody conflicts. Over the past couple of decades, the Mediterranean was – and will continue to be – the stage of political upheavals, both for countries bordering the sea and for countries that see the Mediterranean as a way out from war and poverty. These upheavals produced and are still producing migration flows that bring masses of people to our coasts. To these people, Italy is called to provide dialogue, hospitality, tolerance and ability to understand diversity. Italy is the frontier of Europe. Its institutions must make an organisational and economic effort, its people a cultural effort. This is an effort we must share with the rest of Europe, knowing that immigration, for countries with a decreasing population, accounts for an important factor of economic growth. Policies to help migrants settle in are essential to prevent or tackle the risk of fundamentalism, which might be triggered or fuelled by social exclusion and poverty. This risk is even greater now that nationalism and xenophobia are returning or getting harsher.

But if religion can give rise to fundamentalism, religious culture as a universally unifying factor might provide a shared spirituality that can serve as a launch pad for dialogue and mutual understanding. Religion can be either a unifying factor or a source of bloody conflict. Inter-faith dialogue and dialogue-building policies must make religions a positive factor for cooperation among people from different backgrounds, for integration and for social inclusion, knowing full well that religious intolerance can be consciously fuelled to become a powerful instrument of political hegemony and power.

During the last few decades, great progress was made in inter-faith dialogue among the great monotheistic religions, thanks to the efforts of their spiritual leaders. In this framework, I would like to recall the last important step in this direction: the 17 March meeting of leaders of the three monotheistic faiths during the Global Freedom Network. The meeting produced an agreement aimed at stemming modern forms of slavery and trafficking in human beings and at cracking down globally on these crimes. This is but one tangible example of what breakthroughs may be achieved if we open up to dialogue: an example also for policy-makers.

It is up to politicians and secular institutions – Governments, Parliaments, Regions and local government bodies that are closer to the public – to strengthen and disseminate the values of understanding diversity, tolerance and social inclusion. These values are the spawning ground for inter-faith dialogue. Schools and education providers in general are called to play an important role in forging tomorrow's citizens, starting with preschool children. They must pave the way for the development of a civil culture founded on cultural and religious pluralism. It is through education that we become aware of the cultural milieus where religions are rooted. This enables the young to learn the history, traditions and values of such cultures, and therefore to acknowledge their dignity.

Through education we understand the historical, philosophical and cultural bonds of religions: these bonds must be used to the full in order to enable understanding, mutual respect and dialogue. I would like to stress that education and the young are an important channel to spread a culture of tolerance, pluralism and inter-faith dialogue, also within families.

It is therefore very significant and important also for the future of inter-faith dialogue that Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has put schools at the centre of his Government's plan of action, by announcing sizable investments in school renovation and teacher training programmes. Schools will play a strategic role, not only in training students to live and compete in the society of knowledge and technological innovation, but also to make our citizens ready to live in the era of globalization.

Political institutions have a duty to render such principles as equal rights and antidiscrimination – which are enshrined in our Constitution – effective both in the work place and in society at large. These principles are a prerequisite for the development of the conditions for dialogue between people of different faith and culture. The outcome of this dialogue should be a shared notion of civil and constitutional values, which is the prerequisite for being one nation.

Thank you very much for your attention