Sixty bishops from twenty countries attended The Mediterranean, a Frontier of Peace[1], a meeting from February 19 to 23, 2020, not by chance in Bari, the setting in 2018 of a significant ecumenical prayer meeting that had seen the patriarchs and heads of the Churches of the Middle East gather around Pope Francis.[2]
With the pope’s encouragement, and on behalf of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti had invited the patriarchs and bishops of the countries bordering the Mediterranean to consider this very particular space in the world for a period of reflection, discernment and pastoral collaboration among the Catholic Churches. In fact, the Mediterranean is “perhaps the most dynamic place of interaction between different societies on the face of the planet, playing a much more significant role in the history of human civilization than any other sea.”[3]
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