London: A senior Roman Catholic cleric has written an open letter to Muslims in the Italian city of Bologna ahead of Ramadan.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who is president of the Episcopal Conference of Italy, called on Catholics and Muslims to share solidarity during the holy month, which falls during the Christian period of Lent, especially in light of the conflict in Gaza.
“The month of your fasting largely coincides with our Lent. It helps us find the essential, as three common elements remind us: supplication, fasting and joy,” he said, according to local newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.
“Justice and peace are like bread and water. Without bread and water one dies, so it is with justice and peace.
“May the discipline of fasting therefore this year be a cry to God and to men for the achievement of justice and peace, first of all in Israel-Palestine and then in all the places where innocent blood is fought and shed.
“Justice and peace, starting from the Holy Land, will open up to a higher goal: forgiveness, since there is no future without forgiveness.”
Zuppi was made a cardinal in 2019 by Pope Francis, having previously served as archbishop of Bologna.
Zuppi was awarded honorary citizenship of Mozambique, having acted as one of the four mediators of the Rome General Peace Accords, which brought an end to the country’s two-year civil war in 1992.
He spent time in Turkiye in 1993 trying to negotiate the release of two Italians after they were taken captive by Kurdish militants.
At the direction of the Vatican, he has also spent time in Ukraine, Russia and the US as part of efforts to bring an end to the war between the two European states, meeting the Ukrainian and American presidents.
Zuppi, who has worked to strengthen ties with the local Muslim community in Bologna in recent years, said solidarity can be found in the joint deprivation of food, both between Catholics and Muslims, but also between members of the two faiths toward people experiencing hunger and ongoing economic hardship.
“May, therefore, the abstinence of the month of Ramadan, in parallel with the Lenten one, trace the holy way for the whole of the coming year: peace, justice, forgiveness, sharing with the poor, friendship with all,” he added.
“I greet you with best wishes which you always exchange: Kull am wa-antum bi-khayr, be well all year round.”
