Festival of Peoples 2025 and Interreligious Prayer

From its very beginning, the Festival has always included two distinct yet complementary moments: the actual celebration – joyful and colourful, filled with dances, songs, music, costumes, colours, and food – and the interreligious prayer, a space for spiritual encounter among people of different faiths. Over the years, the Festival has grown: from the courtyard of the Comboni house, it has moved to Prato della Valle, the great symbolic square of Padua, where it has become part of the City and Provincial Volunteer Day. Among the myriad of gazebos, the 29 stands of the Festival of Peoples Association stood out. The Festival of Peoples in Padua is one of the most beautiful fruits of the commitment of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM)

Interreligious Prayer – “I Am Peace”

An integral part of the Festival is the interreligious prayer, held this year a week later, on 5^th October, in the courtyard of the Comboni house. The chosen theme was ‘I Am Peace’. Prayers spoken and sung in different languages, symbolic gestures, songs, dances, and traditional clothing – expressions of various cultures and religions – gave life to a moving and heartfelt moment that completed the Festival of Peoples.

An image accompanied the prayer: The coolness of peace. A proverb says: “If you look at the reed bed with peace, it will give you coolness; if you look at it with anger, it will strike you.” These words link peace to a feeling of refreshment and wellbeing: peace, whether inner or outer, brings calm, serenity, and harmony – like a cool breeze offering relief and renewal.

During the celebration, the figure of Brother Roger Schutz of Taizé was remembered. He was assassinated in 2005 during evening prayer in his community church. Known for his dedication to reconciliation, peace, and ecumenical dialogue, Brother Roger was a living sign of communion among Christians of different denominations and among all believers in God. He once wrote to young people: “There are so many today who long for a future of peace, for a humanity freed from threats of violence. While some are anxious about the future and feel paralysed, there are also, throughout the world, young people endowed with inventiveness and creativity. Some are bearers of peace where situations of crisis and conflict persist. They persevere even when trials or failure weigh upon their shoulders.”

Pope Francis’s Prayer for Peace was also recited: “Lord, help us! Give us your peace, teach us peace, guide us toward peace. Open our eyes and our hearts and give us the courage to say: Never again war! With war, everything is destroyed. […] May these words be banished from the heart of every man: division, hatred, war! Lord, disarm our tongues and hands; renew our hearts and minds, so that the word that brings us together may always be brother, and the style of our lives become shalom, peace, salam!”

Two symbolic gestures accompanied the invocations for peace:

• the lighting of a candle, placed beside others to create a corner of light and warmth, a sign of shared peace;
• the pouring of a little water, a personal contribution mixed with flour and herbs for the closing moment of prayer.

This final gesture, led by the Comboni brother Simon Tsoklo, was a libation to the ancestors, a rite of the traditional African religion to offer them n’tifafa (‘the coolness of peace’), accompanied by an invocation in Ewe, a language spoken in southern Togo.

Participants in the Prayer

Several religious representatives took part in the prayer: Buddhist monk Dambadeniye Dammarama Maha Thero; Brahmin Pal Ramesh; Comboni Brother Simon Tsoklo; Comboni Father Gaetano Montresor; Renata De Matteis and Davide Bergamasco, ollowers of the Bahá’í Faith; Sandro Vitulo, Secular Franciscan Order; Ait Alla Lousshaine, Islamic Community; Flora Grassivaro, Gukson Capone, and Davide Chirulli, Federation of Families for Peace; Giacomo Colombatti, Community of Sant’Egidio; Cecilia Silva, Filipino Community; Emanuele Breda, Suyo Mahikari Spiritual Association.

Father Gaetano Montresor, mccj