Education, when not merely a simple transfer of technical skills but the experience of the whole person, can build a privileged way in the encounter between religions and cultures.This is the view of the patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, in his first assessment of a meeting of the Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation. The meeting took place June 21 and 22 in Jounieh, Lebanon, on the theme "Education between faith and culture. Christian and Muslim experiences compared. "Further evidence of this, according to the cardinal, is how education is one of the main ways to orientate in an important way the process of mixing peoples and living civilizations on a global level.The meeting in Lebanon served to reinvigorate the commitment of Oasis which aims to be an open forum and a network of relations and exchanges, such as the testimonies of Christians living in Muslim majority countries, aware of the inevitable circular nature of faith and culture.The Oasis Foundation, created in 2004 by Cardinal Angelo Scola, pursues its mission through various means such as a biannual magazine printed in four editions (English-Arabic, English-Urdu, French-Arabic,and Italian-Arabic) and distributed in Europe and in most countries in Africa and Asia, a newsletter, a website (www.oasiscenter.eu), public events, research and a series of books.Cardinal Angelo Scola: "So to put education at the center is a great way to mature men of peace, actually to open themselves to one another, to accept difference as a richness, and then to live today's society as a plural society."Cardinal Angelo Scola: "One of the best things we found here is that even in Lebanon - interesting also the experience in Algeria, the experience of Pakistan etc... the process of effective integration of interreligious and cross-cultural elements is far more advanced in schools and universities than in the rest of society."Cardinal Angelo Scola: "The fundamental purpose of Oasis is that the awareness of the different forms of Islam acts as a provocation designed to better deepen the meaning of the Christian faith and thus to make a thorough work on ecumenism as well as interreligious dialogue."

Education, when not merely a simple transfer of technical skills but the experience of the whole person, can build a privileged way in the encounter between religions and cultures.This is the view of...leggi tutto