Cardinal Zuppi: reading the names of children to remember, always. A ceremony in Marzabotto to commemorate the children who died in the Holy Land

Reading the more than 12,000 names of the children who died in the Holy Land serves "to remember, to show attention, from this place that is a place of suffering and that has always, intentionally, been a place of remembrance of all the victims". With the hope that "by stopping at the suffering of children, something new and different can begin again". This was explained by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, arriving at Monte Sole di Marzabotto, where, in the ruins of the church of Casaglia, set on fire in 1944 by the Nazi-Fascists, the prayer marathon, scheduled to last until the evening, gets underway. "And then because they are not numbers, they are people. They will go on for many hours, it becomes an insistent prayer so that we can stop and choose the path of ceasefire and peace. We hope that this,' Zuppi added, 'will lead to adequate responses: the suffering of children most of all must strike. We will start with the children killed by Hamas on 7 October, then all those killed since then, and we hope that this will make everyone choose other paths and not endanger the lives of the innocent. Their death, of all of them and everyone, will bring tears of emotion and choices that are finally far-sighted, of peace, and not tragically opportunistic. There is no ranking in sorrow,' Zuppi concludes. The names and ages of the children who died from 7 October to 15 July are read out: 469 pages, 12,211 Palestinians, 16 Israelis.

The archbishop of Bologna, cardinal Matteo Zuppi, once again making his own the Pope's call for an end to hostilities in the Holy Land and other places of conflict, will hold a celebration in Marzabotto on Thursday 14 August 'in the name of the innocent victims in the Holy Land',

Marzabotto is one of the places in our country that testifies most eloquently to the tragedy of war: the ruins of the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Casaglia, in the Monte Sole Regional Park, symbolise the massacre of 1944. The inhabitants of the area gathered in the church of Casaglia in an attempt to escape the German soldiers of the Reich. They were killed by the Nazi-Fascists.

At the celebration on 14 August - from 2pm to 6pm - all the thousands of names of the Palestinian children and 19 Israelis who have died since 7 October 2023 will be read out and peace will be invoked. An initiative strongly desired also by the Little Family of the Annunciation (the community founded by Fr Giuseppe Dossetti, with a rooted presence in the Holy Land.

With Matteo Zuppithere will also be their Superior, Paolo Barabino. 'There has been too much bloodshed, a massacre that has no end,' explains Barabino, explaining the reasons for organising this initiative. Of strong symbolic value is the choice to read out all the names of the little victims of the conflict. 'The names,' the Genoese monk explains, 'recall a story, they recall the dignity of the person. And then in reading the names of the children we think back to the thought of Dossetti who said that children are the only fully innocent ones, they are the most victimized. We believe that theirs is the most innocent blood, a blood that is not lost but which cries out, which cries out to men, which also cries out to God and which has its own strength even after death'..