Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini on Tuesday presented a programme of 20 cultural itineraries designed for the Jubilee Year, and said one of the greatest challenges facing cultural education is that of creating mutual understanding between diverse groups.
"Reciprocal knowledge, interreligious dialogue, are real challenges, above all in large cities where millions of people of different faiths and different cultures live," Franceschini said.
Also at the presentation were Monsignor Liberio Andreatta, director of the Vatican's Office for Religious Pilgrimages (ORP); Giorgia Calò, councillor for the Jewish community of Rome; and Yahya Pallavicini, vice-president of the Islamic Religious Community of Italy (CO.RE.IS.). The programme's title translates as "The Ways of the Jubilee: Twenty Cultural Itineraries in Rome for Twenty Centuries of History, Art, and Religion".
Franceschini last year organised a gathering of 83 cultural ministers from around the world for Milan's Expo 2015 and invited the late Umberto Eco to speak about reciprocal knowledge among cultures, a speech he said he recalled with "great affection and admiration".
"He reminded us that our job is mainly that of facilitating knowledge, and that almost all wars, conflicts, and hate from the past and present come from a lack of reciprocal knowledge, mistrust and distance," he said.
"So this is the main work that we have to do". Franceschini said he'd like to work on promoting itineraries in urban outskirts as well.
"There are lesser-known but still important places, both for archaeology as well as contemporary art, that have become places of beauty but that distracted eyes don't see," he said.
The culture minister said the ministry has just finished selecting 42 projects from among more than 1,000 entries nationwide for a programme called MigrArti.
"They are cultural activities with local administrations and this country's migrant communities that really try to help build knowledge and integration in a concrete way".
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