In the charming 16th century Palazzo San Sebastiano’s courtyard, Marco Impagliazzo, director of the Sant'Egidio Community, and Antonio Spadaro, director of the magazine Civiltà Cattolica, discussed the current geopolitical context.

The two guests, along with the journalist Marco Grieco who chaired the event, agreed that we’re living in a Third World War, a conflict, as Pope Francis said, that is dispersed in different parts of our planet, from the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the civil war in Myanmar and many more.

According to Spadaro, peace is a feeble value that reflects the fragility of today’s world. From the author's point of view, if a conflict is not resolved at the deepest cultural and social level, the peace that will be set is just going to form the basis for a new clash. For this reason, Spadaro maintained, it’s important to have spiritual figures such as the Pope, whose personality has a direct impact on a global scale, both politically and religiously.

On the other hand, Impagliazzo outlined the main elements he believes are essential to be, or to become, a peacemaker. In his opinion indeed, the first, necessary step is the ability to empathize with the people that are living in a warzone. The second point is to do whatever we can to help those who are trying to escape from those territories where peace is being taken away. Two things that we can do in this sense are welcoming the refugees in our countries and integrating them within our society.

Lastly, both Spadaro and Impagliazzo talked about the issue of migrations. They both shared the need of creating international channels to allow refugees to arrive in their arrival countries in a safe, legal way.