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“This is the most diverse school of politics in the world,” says proudly José María del Corral, creator and president of the pontifical foundation Scholas Occurrentes, which promotes and coordinates this new initiative of Pope Francis, launched at the end of 2021.
“Diversity at all levels,” Del Corral says. Indeed, this school, whose mission is to train politicians with passion for the common good and social friendship, among other values promoted by Francis, has convened 50 young leaders from 34 countries on 5 continents, from different spiritual traditions - Judaism, Islam, native peoples, various Christian traditions and agnostic - from all socio-economic levels and from very distant realities. One of the young people, all under 30, who participates is a cartonero and lives in Villa 31; another is a refugee.
The young people selected for this school, 27 women and 23 men, are already mostly leaders in their communities.
Now, 8 of these students are in Argentina, one team in San Antonio de los Cobres (Salta) and another in Cuatro Bocas (Miraflores, in the Impenetrable Chaco).
The training they follow in Fratelli tutti, explains Del Corral, has three stages: listening, creating, celebrating.
Listening is not only done with the ear, he clarifies, it is the field learning of a methodology. “You listen with your whole body”, to get to perceive the problems on which they later go to work. These young people, says Del Corral, first made that experience with themselves, in the ten days they were living in Rome last December, during which through a dynamic that includes games and artistic expression, among other things, they sought to listen to each other, learn about life experience, share their pains, express them. “If the heart does not change, education does not change, says the Pope”, quotes Del Corral.
They also listened to specialists who instructed them in the different methodologies of observation and data collection. They also had talks on economics, the environment and social movements, covering all the issues and values that the Pope addressed in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti.
Currently, the participants of the School of Politics are making their first field experiences. Those who came to Argentina are all from other countries. Those who go to a country cannot originate from it, in order to ensure the widest possible exchange.
Young people from Uruguay, Spain and Nigeria went to San Antonio de los Cobres. And to the Chaco, from Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, Canada and Nigeria.
In Salta, the underlying problem is the high rate of suicide in the aforementioned locality. And in the case of the Impenetrable Chaco, it is addictions, which shows that drug trafficking has infused our country even the most remote.
In both localities there are communities of Scholas Occurrentes, the network of schools promoted by the Vatican worldwide. In Cuatro Bocas (Miraflores, Chaco), there is a house that already houses 15 young Wichí people in rehabilitation. The center operates in an abandoned public school that the province gave to Scholas and the foundation refurbished.
The two Fratelli Tutti teams are sharing experiences with local communities, collecting data and collecting experiences.
This Friday they finish their homework and return to Buenos Aires, where both groups will meet at Villa 31 for breakfast to exchange views on what they have experienced. The students will talk about their learning during these days spent in Argentina, immersed in realities that are perhaps very different from their own and in any case very mobilizing.
After that, each one will return to their respective country from which they will virtually exchange experiences with others and, at the stage of creation, draw up original proposals. In a third stage, they will have to share these results with the communities. In this, Del Corral says, we always follow the Pope's proposal, to go from the bottom up, to see concrete reality first, to listen.
He concludes: “This is not an individual training school, but it seeks to form a political community of young people”.
THE VALUES PROMOTED BY THE FRATELLI TUTTI SCHOOL
During the official presentation of the Fratelli Tutti School, on May 20, 2021, Pope Francis reflected on the meaning of politics and left several definitions. Some of them have a very special resonance in the current world situation, such as the one that said: “A policy that is not capable of dialogue to avoid war is a policy that is defeated, ended. It has lost its vocation for unity, harmony, even with different opinions, which is why dialogue is key in politics”.
“When they ask me 'how is politics in the world? ' I tell you: Look where there are wars, there is the defeat of politics”
“It must always be borne in mind that unity is superior to conflict. We must seek unity”
“Politics is not the arrival, it is the way, it is a process initiation”
“Mistrust of politics comes because it is mistaken for a company, where you can see what doesn't work for me or how much it gives me”
“Politics is walking, it is seeing, especially if the politician burns along the way”
“The test of the honorability of a nation for me is: do you make weapons for wars? Do you make your wealth by selling weapons for others to kill themselves? There we will know if a nation is healthy or not.”
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