For Prayer, the Poor, and Peace Fr. Robert P. Imbelli Initially known for its work with the poor and elderly in Rome, the Community of Sant’Egidio is now recognized as an advocate and activist for refugees and migrants worldwide, a force for interreligious and ecumenical dialogue, and an effective peacebuilder in hot spots around the globe. Today, the community boasts 50,000 members in 73 countries, with groups at Boston College (highlighted on page 34) and Notre Dame, and in New York City. Pope Francis marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of Sant’Egidio in 2018, encouraging the community’s work in the service of humanity. “Today, more than ever, continue audaciously along this path. Continue to be close to the children of the peripheries through your Schools of Peace which I have visited, continue to be close to the elderly who are often discarded but who, for you, are friends. Continue to open humanitarian corridors for refugees of war and hunger. The poor are your treasure,” the pope declared. The reflection below, written in 1994 in Commonweal magazine by Boston College Associate Professor Emeritus and frequent C21 supporter and contributor Fr. Robert Imbelli, was the first treatment of Sant’Egidio in a major English-language publication. While the size and number of Sant’Egidio’s communities around the world have grown with the scope of its work, the spirit and mission of the group that Fr. Imbelli describes below have remained a constant.
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a spring evening in rome. People, returning from work, pause in one of the city’s countless piazzas, chatting amiably. These public spaces seem expressly designed for such conviviality, luring individuals and families into the forum of the res publica. Then at seven, as the bell of the baroque church in this ancient Roman district of Trastevere tolls, they enter the church for vespers, not to leave the world, but to concentrate it at its still point. The Community of Sant’Egidio comes together in prayer. The community takes its name from the old Carmelite convent in that small piazza in Trastevere, where its members have gathered each evening since the early seventies and which still remains the heart of a community now numbering 15,000 members. Half the members live in Rome and come together for prayer, worship, and social service in local groups, large and small, in various zones of the sprawling metropolis. Another 5,000 live in other Italian cities, and the rest in various European countries as well as in Africa and Latin America.
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c21 resources | spring/summer 2022
The community’s origins recall the Gospel’s “mustard seed.” A group of Roman high school students, meeting together in the fateful year 1968, in the midst of ecclesial and social turmoil, pledged to live their lives in the light of the Gospel and the service of the poor. From such inconspicuous seeds has grown a spiritually vibrant community that is now recognized canonically by the Holy See. Impressions abounded during that first vesper service and in subsequent visits and exchanges with community members. I was struck most forcefully by the evangelical spirituality that directs the members’ vision and commitment. One sensed the task of evangelization to be so urgent, the harvest so ripe, that little time could be spared for ecclesiastical polarization and contestation. The profound spiritual renewal, desired and charted by Vatican II, seems here to have brought forth mature fruit. The community’s service to the poor, for example, takes multiple forms according to local needs. Members visit the
Community of Sant'Egidio photo credit:
The Community of Sant’Egidio
