The sense of community, listening, proximity. These are the themes that opened the first official meeting between the bishop of Cremona Antonio Napolioni and the municipal council, accompanied by the general secretary Gabriella Di Girolamo, received today in the Curia for a moment of knowledge and dialogue. At the center are the actions and projects, but above all the vision, that the mayor Andrea Virgilio and the administrators wanted for the city and its communities for the coming years. Starting from a common line: proximity, a challenge that administrations face but which, at the same time, is also the key word of the synodal path that is being experienced within the Italian Church.
«One of the mistakes that we sometimes make as a Christian community – observed Mgr. Napolioni in his greeting – is to cultivate our internal proximity and not an inter-proximity between cultures, communities and sensitivities. Proximity must have subjects who become close: for this reason your task and our mission is to try to nourish a culture of democracy and participation, seen as a call to take care of others, of the city, of its spaces and neighborhoods ».
Exhortation and address immediately collected by the mayor: «We are at the beginning of a journey – said Virgilio – from now on we start, with consistency with what was promised to our voters and in general to all our citizens. These first three and a half months of office have been a phase of listening to the city, with its complexities and its community contexts, and these moments must and will always have as their basis spontaneous interlocutions and daily relationships, the same ones that we must defend and also build outside buildings and institutional headquarters. The challenges that we also share with you are many and we have many sensitivities in common. We have set our choices by emphasizing an approach that will be to start from the essentials in many areas, including the functioning of the administrative machine, which must be fast and even more efficient in responding to citizens’ needs”.
The councilors also shared the need to find a dialogue with that segment of the population that does not participate in community life and is more difficult to involve through participation paths: «We have the theme of a gray area that also exists in our city and which it is impossible to enter: people – continued the mayor – who cannot be intercepted, and I am also thinking of young people who often struggle to build relationships and leave the domestic context. I think of the difficulty in the world of volunteering and associations in finding people who get involved and make their time available not for themselves, but for something higher. The challenge we therefore have is to intercept these people, offering them a horizon, in the many venues that civil society and the Christian community offer with their examples and experiences: from schools to associations, from oratories to neighborhood committees, from companies sports to the microcommunities that arise and work to network and generate a wave of democracy and participation without which we administrators, despite the courage of our choices, could do little”.
For the Diocese of Cremona, together with Monsignor Napolioni, the vicar general Msgr. was present. Massimo Calvi, Don Gianpaolo Maccagni, episcopal vicar for pastoral care and the clergy, Don Pietro Samarini, vicar for pastoral area 3, Don Federico Celini, coordinator of the Culture and Communication Area, don Maurizio Lucini, coordinator of the Service Area, the Director of Caritas Cremonese
Don Pierluigi Codazzi and Eugenio Bignardi, head of the Social and Labor Pastoral Office
The meeting was then followed by interventions by the councilors who touched on and shared many other aspects, starting from the social and moving on to youth safety and hardship, which requires a transversal approach in response. Broad and complex themes for which there will be no shortage of other opportunities for discussion in the future between institutions committed to the good of the community.
Source: TeleRadio Cremona Cittanova
