Experienced politicians together with young people making their first experience in politics were the promoters of a streaming event last May 2, 2021. This event, the result of months of shared work and part of the program of United World Week 2021, was to celebrate 25 years since the founding of the Politics for Unity Movement (MPPU).
Eight simultaneous languages, more than 500 listening points from all over the world, and 4,000 live views. In addition to the richness of the topics at the center of the convention, there was also the unexpected and joyfully welcomed encouragement of Pope Francis, who during the Sunday Regina Caeli addressed all the adherents of the MPPU “founded by Chiara Lubich,” wishing them “good work in the service of good politics.”
First of all, the live program made us see again some witnesses of the birth of the Politics for Unity Movement, the moment when Focolare founder Chiara Lubich launched it on May 2, 1996, in Naples (Italy) meeting with a group of politicians of different party affiliations. This was followed by several stages in the journey of the MPPUs around the world, up to the initiative that has reached its conclusion on this occasion: the Call for a Politics of Quality. Citizens, administrators, legislators, officials and diplomats, scholars, and members of civil organizations in 25 countries have cooperated in the drafting of this text: an interesting international deliberative process has resulted in a “call for action,” an appeal for action addressed to politicians in cities, parliaments, and international organizations, and to all those involved in political action, to support the irreversible path of peoples towards unity and peace.
A “politics of quality” – for the authors of the Appeal – is a policy that is “better every day,” a policy that is “gentle” and “strong” at the same time, entrusted to women and men who know how to look at the deepest and most shared values of humanity, competent politicians who know how to plan for the long term and who are accountable for their mandate, who do not use people for electoral calculations, who activate processes by recognizing the self-organizing capacity of communities, and who are on the side of the victims but do not abandon the guilty.
“Of course, there are thousands of emergencies to deal with,” said Adelard Kananira, from Burundi, also on behalf of the young politicians interviewed on the program, “but we know that today the emergency that challenges us all is that of the vaccine as a common good. No time was wasted, therefore, and under the direction of the MPPU team and the young promoters of the United World Week, a strong international initiative was launched in the days immediately preceding the event: for universal access to vaccines and their widespread production, in view of the World Trade Organization meeting and the G20[1] meeting on global health.
“This is the response we want to propose, connecting established systems with an action-sign for those in the world who do not have access to health care, because we believe that the good of others, even those we do not know, is our own good,” says Klara Costa from Brazil, from the Focolare’s Youth for a United World Movement.
“Taking care of each other: this is the concrete sign of a politics of quality. We have tried to witness this in the places where the pandemic is most serious,” said Mario Bruno, president of the International Center of MPPU. “We met the operators of a hospital ship, the ‘Barco Papa Francisco,’ which is bringing health care to those populations in Parà, Brazil. It is they whom we want to reach as soon as possible with the vaccine.”
In closing, the Appeal – and the streaming – was, therefore, the design of high politics, anchored in reality and full of ideal strength at the same time, a politics that knows how to act “to love and heal the world.” We start anew from here.
MPPU International Center
[1] An international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union.
