Some non-believers will also be pilgrims for peace on October 27 in Assisi

On October 27 in Assisi, together with Benedict XVI and many representatives of the various Christian confessions, there will be a small group of five people who are a-typical pilgrims to the city of Saint Francis. Their presence in a certain way makes this meeting in Assisi a first, compared to previous ones with John Paul II. They are people from the worlds of culture, science and philosophy who do not belong to any organized religious expression, but represent – though in different ways – the multitude of those who do not profess any creed and yet who have an ethical and humanistic vision of existence and being. These people, who represent in their language and origins, the multiplicity of lands and cultures, have in common a certain characteristic which was expressed best by the contemporary agnostic American writer, Cormac McCarthy in his novel Sunset Limited: “The questioner wants the truth. The doubter wants to be told that the truth doesn’t exist.”

These non-believers, who have accepted with enthusiasm to be pilgrims for peace and justice together with believers, certainly have some answers, conceptions and ideas in their heads and their hearts, but want to ask questions of those who believe in order to have a useful exchange about the fudamental questions of life and death, truth and lies, transcendence and immanence, good and evil, justice and violence, peace and war, love and pain. The presence of this small group – representing a vast and varied horizon of men and women without an explicit religious identity, but ready to look beyond the surfaces of things and people to intuitively find meaning at a deeper level – is much desired and supported by Benedict XVI who already at Christmastime 2009, speaking to his closest collaborators, the Roman Curia, declared: “I think that today too the Church should open a sort of ‘Court of the Gentiles’ in which people might in some way latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery, at whose service the inner life of the Church stands. Today, in addition to interreligious dialogue, there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not wish to be left utterly without God, but rather to draw near to him, even if as to the Unknown.”

From these words of the Holy Father, a “Court of the Gentiles”, has been created in the last few months. It is a place of exchange – eye to eye and with ears open – as happened in the same spaces used by pagans, the gentes and of course Gentiles within the area of the temple of Jerusalem. This initiative was organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and solemnly inaugurated last March in Paris, at the Sorbonne, at Unesco, at the Academie Francaise and in the square of Notre-Dame. It will continue in coming months in many cities (Bologna to Bucharest, Tirana to Barcelona, Marseille to Prague, Palermo to Quebece and Washington, etc.).