Fifty years at the service of peace, the poor, the sick, and also interreligious dialogue: these are the guiding lights of the St. Egidio Community, founded in Rome in 1968 by Andrea Riccardi. The Community, which today numbers thousands of adherents throughout the world, has carried out many important and successful initiatives, such as the role it played in peace negotiations in Mozambique. In 1987 the Community’s efforts to promote peace was commended in a testimony by Pope John Paul II, who had invited representatives of the world’s religions to Assisi the year before to take part in a universal prayer for this intention. Ever since then, in the wake of “the spirit of Assisi,” the St. Egidio Community organizes annual international encounters for peace in different cities of the world.
On the global level, the Community’s agenda includes striving to promote disarmament (right now it is pursuing this goal in the Central African Republic), working to fight the death penalty around the world, and providing accompaniment for AIDS patients by means of its Dream Program.
But its most noteworthy success, says Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Community, is that it has helped many people discover the joy of the Gospel.