Building Hope

English. Italian Video. English Video

A dialogue with Giorgio Vittadini (President of the Foundation for Subsidiarity), Fausto Bertinotti (Former President of the Chamber of Deputies) and Pietro Sarubbi (Actor - The Passion) on Building Hope.

Building Hope. A dialogue with Professor Giorgio Vittadini, President Fausto Bertinotti and Actor Pietro Sarubbi (Barabbas - The Passion) on "Building Hope" at the West Coast Meeting.

Produced by the digital cultural center epochal change using AI narration.

Moderator: Good evening, everyone. A huge thank you to all of you here tonight and to all our friends joining us from home for the inaugural session of the 10th West Coast Meeting.

This year, the title of our meeting is taken from a quote by Italo Calvino: “What Hell Is Not.” Before I introduce tonight's guests, whose names are also in the program, I will first give a brief introduction. As usual, I want to make this evening's inaugural meeting an opportunity to express my gratitude to all those who have made this event possible.

We are in the beautiful Santa Caterina Auditorium, right next to the Chiostri di Santa Caterina. In the coming days, from tonight until Sunday, I would like to remind you that it will be possible to visit the exhibition on the First World War, entitled 1914: Something New on the Western Front: The True Story of an Extraordinary Christmas. You will be able to visit the exhibition thanks to the students of the Liceo Giordano Bruno in Albenga and Giovanni Falcone in Loano, who have already seen the presentation. Next door, in the other cloister, there will also be an exhibition by Confartigianato.

So, I would say that I will start with the theme of this evening's inaugural meeting, which is "Building Hope." As you will have seen in the program, we have guests joining us from Rome: President Fausto Bertinotti, who is, in the view of many, a trade unionist, politician, member of parliament, and former President of the Chamber of Deputies. We also have with us here Giorgio Vittadini, President of the Foundation for Subsidiarity, whom I invite to come up on stage, and Pietro Sarubbi, an actor whom you all know. Pietro, come up. Giorgio, perhaps you can stand here in the center. And Pietro, please come up. Pietro Sarubbi. He should be connected with us now from Rome, shortly.

In the meantime, since we're waiting, I'd like to say something. The title of our meeting, as I said before, is "What Hell Is Not," but I'd like to read Calvino's sentence in its entirety because I think it says what we wanted to say even better. I'll read Italo Calvino's sentence:

"Hell for the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the hell we all live in every day, which we form by being together. There are two ways not to suffer from it. The first is easy for many: accept hell and become part of it to the point of no longer seeing it. The second is risky and requires continuous attention and learning: to seek and know how to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, is not hell, and to make it last, to give it space."

Along with this quote, there is another one that I wanted to read to you, which is also very short and seems to me to say the same thing, perhaps from a different point of view. It is a quote from Emanuele Severino, who says to his Marxist friends who ask him which side he is on, “You and your opponents, and of course myself, are all on the same side: the side where the desert grows—the desert and the history of the West. But the gaze that sees the desert growing does not belong to the desert; it is on the other side, and in it lies every possibility of salvation, until this gaze is witnessed."

It is inevitable that the defenders of man are failed wrecks that the growing desert leaves behind. Why did I read these sentences? Why did we choose this title? Precisely because I believe that these two sentences, taken together, pose a question. Apart from the terminology, "hell" and "desert" are the same thing. But the authors of these sentences, Italo Calvino and Emanuele Severino, are saying the same thing: they are warning us of a problem, a danger that concerns each one of us. It is as if every day, every morning, each of us is faced with this choice of freedom—that is, deciding whether we want to simply be part of hell, accepting it, perhaps content with what we have. It is like flattening ourselves, in a way. Or do we recognize that the desert is advancing, that the desert is growing, but the gaze that sees it growing does not belong to the desert; it is on the other side?

And so we are told that there is a possibility for someone, within this gaze, to recognize that we are not yet part of the desert. We are on the other side. But this gaze that sees the desert growing must be witnessed, like an encounter, an event, something that makes it possible to start again. The great desire to start again is within each one of us. This brings to mind the dramatic dialogue that we often hear at Mass on Sundays in the Gospel of John, when one of the leaders of the Pharisees goes to Jesus at night and asks him the great question: “How can a man be born when he is old?” And Jesus replies, “You are a teacher of Israel, and do you not know these things?”

One must be born again from above. That is, something must happen, something that restarts life. So these days, from tonight until Sunday, June 29, will not be so much cultural debates or philosophical moments, but rather a journey—an opportunity to increase our awareness of this perspective that sees the desert growing and therefore does not belong to it. We would like these days to be an opportunity to meet people like Giorgio Vittadini, Pietro Sarubbi, Fausto Bertinotti, and all those who will take the stage over the next few days. We want to understand that the desert is growing, but we who see it growing do not belong to it; we are on the other side. Therefore, there is a possibility that life still has something meaningful to say, that life can truly begin again. To start again, we need an encounter, an event. I would start here if we have a connection with President Bertinotti. I would start with a question for him. Not yet? Then I will start right away with Giorgio Vittadini. Giorgio, I wanted to ask you, with regard to the sentence by Calvino that we read, what does "what hell is not" mean to you? Where have you seen it? How do you see it?

Giorgio Vittadini: So I'll start with two quotes from Don Giussani. One is about an old but still relevant song by Jannacci, "Ho visto un re" ("I Saw a King"). Giussani commented on this song, saying that the king is the symbol of the power of this society that hates our sadness. The living flesh of those questions that constitute the heart of man is the first sign of humanity. Your crying hurts the king. We must always be cheerful. Those who have power become sad if they see you cry.

In my opinion, we are in an era like the end of the Roman Empire because everything is falling apart. But above all, a wrong conception is falling apart: a wrong conception of economics and politics that had the 18th century as its pivot. You understand that if you build an economy on the idea that the selfishness of individuals leads to collective well-being through an invisible hand—if selfishness is the starting point of a society, if destroying the other is the way the world moves forward—it will not bring wealth. It doesn't work when we start talking about sustainability, environmental destruction, inequality, and wars. We are talking about the failure of this system.

From a political point of view, there is Hobbes's homo homini lupus. We thought we had overcome it, and now there are more non-democracies than democracies. The idea is that a dictator, even if democratically elected, rules, and the more he rules, the more relevant he is.

In fact, democratic countries are almost waiting for a world where someone can dominate and rule more quickly. Well, there is destruction, there is Gaza, there is Ukraine. There are many wars. So if I am sad, it means that something is resisting. If I am sad—if I have the courage to say that I am not happy that a people is being destroyed, that weapons are being used, that the poor cannot receive medical care while the rich can—it means that there is hope. It means that there is someone who is not giving up.

Giussani's comment on Jannacci is this: as long as someone says they are sad, it means there is something that cannot be reduced to what is. St. Benedict was sad. He wasn't satisfied with what he had. He went with a handful of people to a place, far from Rome, to live and make present the sadness he felt in the face of the world, refusing to become a pawn. So Giussani says, as long as someone says, "I'm sad, I'm not happy," realpolitik doesn't convince me.

The things that powerful people say do not convince me. It doesn't convince me that someone suffers, nor does it convince me that someone dies of cancer. I am not happy that a person I care about suffers, even if they are not related to me. As long as this something remains—and this is a moment like the end of the Roman Empire, as Benedict XVI said—there is hope. On the day John Paul II died, Ratzinger gave a lecture in Subiaco. There are places where one cultivates this positive sadness, this good sadness, as Jannacci says in another song—this pain for evil, this desire for good.

So the theme that we must have the courage to address right now is that we are sad, that we are not satisfied. Satiated and desperate, as John Paul II said when he went to visit Emilia. Instead, if every day we open the newspaper and are moved by the story of someone who has had a bad day, or we are moved by someone who is building something, then comes the second part of this revival of humanity. Linked to sadness, there is something else that is greater than hell, and that is desire.

Because when someone is sad, they want change. They want people to be safe. They want doctors to find medicines to cure cancer. They want wars to end. They want poverty to be lessened, and so they start building. Giussani says that desire is the spark that ignites the engine. All human movements arise from this dynamism that is constitutive of man. Desire ignites the engine of man, and so he sets out in search of bread and water, in search of work, in search of a woman, in search of a more comfortable chair, more decent housing. It is precisely because of the growth, expansion, and maturation of these stimuli within them—which the Bible calls the heart and which I would also call reason—that there is no reason without some form of affection.

After the war, we were devastated. We were sad, but we were full of desire. Between 1880 and 1925, 25 million people emigrated because they were unhappy with their lives.

They wanted a better life. They saved our country with their remittances. And in the post-war period, we were devastated, but there were people who started building their factories, their jobs, their homes. In just a few years, we became one of the seven industrialized countries in the world. Our country remains a humane place where people still feel moved when someone dies, where things like what happened in Oregon, United States, don't happen, where a man wanted to jump off a bridge and the drivers said, "Go ahead, we can wait all day."

As long as we cultivate this sadness and this desire, there is hope. There are people who do not give up. Over time, as we did in the post-war period, there is hope that desire will also lead to a new economy and construction in different places. The different place can be the family, where one does not stop having children just because the world is going downhill. It is a business that employs ten people. It is a school where one spends time raising someone. It is a community where people help those around them who are poorer or struggling more.

It is a place like this, where people decide to make a gesture to come together. So I say that this is the time to rediscover these levels of humanity that arise precisely in the breaks in history, when there are earthquakes, when everything falls apart. We must shake off the torpor that has gripped us for so many years—the torpor of phrases like Thatcher's, "society does not exist." No, society exists as long as there are people who want to live, be together, suffer, and not become numb to news reports that 30, 40, or 50 people have died.

We must try to build a better life, thinking about the future of our young people. I have lived like this, not because of my own merit, but because of what I have encountered. I think this is the hope of today. It is precisely at a time like this, when we defeat the real enemy, which is torpor, resignation, and the feeling that there is nothing to be done, that recovery can begin. A place like this tonight is a sign, because people have left their homes in the heat to feel something that will allow them to say to those close to them the next day, "Go, fight, work, don't give up. If you fail, start again." And with this, be a sign for others.

Moderator: Thank you, Giorgio. I would like to ask President Bertinotti about this, just for a quick exchange. I know he can't stay with us for long, only about 15 minutes. President, you heard the speech by Giorgio Vittadini.

Fausto Bertinotti: Good evening, everyone. First of all, I'm very sorry not to be with you. I heard Vittadini's speech from afar, which, as always, intrigues and fascinates me. Unfortunately, I find it a little difficult to share his optimism. While I do share his belief in love, desire, and brotherhood, his hope seems to lean more towards St. Paul's spes contra spem—a hope to be rebuilt from within us, when it seems to have dissolved in the world.

Because I think what you say, Vittadini, is absolutely understandable. But how can desire, hope, and brotherhood become politics—the construction of a society, not just the construction of relationships? In this sense, there is an element that cannot be suppressed. Even in the Nazi concentration camps, as Bonhoeffer explained, one could defend one's dignity as a human being and win one's freedom. But the point is, I think that today we are experiencing a contrast between the deepest yearning that remains in man and the context in which man is called to live. Our time is a time of monsters. As an intellectual to whom I am very attached, Antonio Gramsci, used to say, "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."

The first monster is war. It is too easy, in agreement with you, to say that the first person to understand this monster was a man of the Church: Pope Francis, who, using the language of politics, was able to make a dramatic analysis of our times—the "third world war fought piecemeal." This is what we are experiencing. I feel very close to what you said, but I cannot help saying that today's world is reflected in Gaza. There is no getting away from it. Gaza is the mirror of our times. Even in Gaza, dear friend, hope can live among friends, but it lives alongside devastation. We face such dehumanization, months and months in which there is not enough food for children to survive and other children are maimed by bombs. Generous doctors are forced to operate without anesthesia. It is terrible when a terrible face appears under the guise of the important ordinariness of our time in this precipice, this abyss of inhumanity, of war.

Why do I say that it is the mirror of our times? I am an old militant. I find it very difficult to use the phone if I can't see faces, if I can't relate to people through their eyes. So I will say it very briefly. Vittadini, you said at the beginning of the post-war period, we were poor, yes, but that was a time of hope. I think this is the time of the Apocalypse. That was the time of hope. An old leader from the pre-fascist era said to Dossetti, "How can you put in the Constitution that 'Italy repudiates war'? War is part of politics." And Dossetti replied implacably, "You know why we can think of a world without war? Because we have 55 million dead from the Second World War on our shoulders." That is where our Italian Constitution, the UN Constitution, and the formation of rights came from. It's all a bit harsh, a generous anxiety towards "never again war."

And it seems that, even in the midst of a thousand Cold War trials, we did it. There is a long cycle since the Second World War that includes the very construction of Europe. Let's not talk about the wonderful, albeit dramatic, 1970s in Italy, with the achievements of the Workers' Statute, pension reform, healthcare reform, and school reform, and, if I may say so, civil rights such as divorce and abortion. It was an extraordinary evolution that ended in a drastic defeat. I would like to say to my friend Vittadini that that was a time of hope. Where can you find hope today if not in yourself, in each of us, in our human depths? There is hope in politics, and I think that in order to find it again, we need to escape from what politics is today. We live with the dominance of war, which has also become a language, and with this dominance, we are experiencing a crisis of democracy.

Now, I really don't want to bore you, but does it seem to you that what we are experiencing can in any way be described as a democratic civilization? New empires are born out of the crisis of globalization, and at the head of this endeavor are elected leaders who simply act according to the culture of force. Why? Because they are stronger than you. This can apply to Russia in Ukraine or to the United States in the Middle East.

In this Mediterranean, which has become a sea of death for so many migrants, it has become a meeting place for gang leaders, where one decides to bomb another country. Even the form is now torn apart. It's not that those were good times, but even the dictators of the previous cycle had to declare war. Today, there is no need for that. Any leader of an empire in the making can dictate his own law, which is only the law of the strongest. So how do we counter this trend, this new barbarism?

I might say that we have arrived at this point because we have experienced the crisis of the great popular religions. How many times have you spoken of empty churches? And how many times in the labor movement has there been talk of the loss of this great inspiration of solidarity that had marked our entire history? Today's politics are really reduced to a technique.

I agree with Vittadini's conclusion, I really do, but I think it is not enough to have this desire to cultivate love and indignation. Along with all this, I think we need to be able to put sand in the gears of the machine of death, this politics of power that goes hand in hand with the domination of technology and science, which in turn is subject to the powers of wealth that have an unprecedented concentration. This mechanism, which some have called neo-feudalism, seems to me a terrible but appropriate definition. On the one hand, it is the most radical innovation, and on the other, it is a regression of civilization. I think that in this mechanism that dominates us today, we need to cultivate hope and desire to live. We need to come together to put sand in this war machine to stop it. Excuse me, a big hug.

Moderator:Thank you, Mr. President. Before you go, I know you have just a few minutes, and then I will give the floor to our guests. Recently, on a television program, you said that you were struck by the power of the Church in a devastated and impoverished West, in that the Church appears to be an antibody against the decadence of society and politics. Could you explain what you meant?

Fausto Bertinotti: Well, this is a difficult point for me. On the one hand, I think we are in a process of de-Christianization. How many times have wonderful Catholics investigated this crisis? It is quite clear that in Italy, Catholicism was also imagined as a popular religion. It lived not only in the liturgy and theological research but also in the common life of millions of people. There has still been little reflection on this crisis, which I, on the other hand, have experienced on the side of the labor movement.

But the Church has revealed an exceptional resource in the face of an exceptional situation. A great Pope has died who had sown enormous hope for the future.

And it is precisely in this crisis that he dies. And in the celebration of his passing, as in the formation of his successor, this Church is finding extraordinary strength in the interpretation of a profound need of humanity in our time. I don't know how many words can express it, but of course, it is clothed in words such as "brotherhood" and "peace." I was struck by the fact that two international leaders could be so compelled to propose the term, carried not by force, but by the strength of their convictions—to crouch on two small chairs under the blanket of a gigantic cathedral, as if to mark the poverty of one and the wealth of the other. I think this is a resource that the Church makes available to humanity, and it is very precious. This is why in the West, it seems to me that only within the Church are we capable of entirely escaping the language of war.

Moderator: Thank you, Mr. President. I know you have to go.

Fausto Bertinotti: A big hug to you all and, above all, thank you! As you have seen, I am also a bit gloomy, and I need your help!

Moderator: Thank you again. Pietro, what do you think about these issues that have emerged so far?

Pietro Sarubbi: I am a very simple person. They've made some very profound statements, and I have great respect for Giorgio Vittadini, but I'm a man of the streets, an actor. For me, there is hope! There is hope because I live in the world of work and the world of school. There is hope everywhere; life is everywhere. I go to volunteer in a community for former drug addicts. I see the beauty of their smiles, which, when looked at with love, are reborn. The speech from earlier, "Can an old man be born to a new life?" I see these things every day. That is hope.

Seeing young people who have been terrible, marginalized, who change when looked at with love—for me, that is hope. Hope is in the students who come to school to study despite everything. I teach cinema. You saw that they gave €850,000 to an American gentleman whose only notable achievement was killing his wife and daughter. This is Italian cinema, yet my kids come to study with great effort, believing in it despite these things. That is hope.

Hope lies in the beauty of smiles, in the welcome I received here today, in those wonderful young people who did the catering, guided by the smiles of their teachers. What they did was moving. Seeing young people like that—that is hope. You have to be among people, you have to live among them. In the Gospel, it says, who would put their hands in a bucket full of slime? A madman. Or someone who knows that at the bottom of that slime, there is a pearl. Hope has to be sought. You have to believe in it. You have to put your hands in it.

For me, this is a new life. Since my conversion experience, my life has changed. Normally, my shows always feature two police officers, but for other reasons. Now that has changed, and I'm happy to see smiles. The police do an incredible job in Italy. Incredible. I'd like you to give them a round of applause because we talk about migrants, about inclusion, but you have no idea what it means to go out on the streets every day and deal with them. I see these young people attending the officers' school, many from the south, who are said to have no hope. They are the hope of Italy. So, everyone, like in the post-war period, like my father and my grandfather did, we roll up our sleeves and start again. This is the greatness of Italy, the greatness of Italian men and women. Roll up your sleeves and start again.

Moderator: Thanks Pietro! Now, Giorgio, I wanted to pick up on some of the things President Bertinotti said. You mentioned desire. He said he was afraid of being a little too gloomy in his analysis, but it seems to me that what you said earlier about desire as the driving force of human beings is still the great hope that sustains us.

Giorgio Vittadini:Bertinotti is right; desire is not enough. We need to understand where desire leads. Let's take the negative example of television talk shows: two groups of people, stirred up by a moderator who shouts, wanting blood as if they were gladiators. They analyze situations that are not theirs and talk about ideas that are negative because analysis, even of a positive future, kills.

Desire speaks of another world. What goes together with desire? We need to build positive examples. The transition that makes us positive is not the analysis of the world, but constructing an example where, as in the desert, there is an oasis. We have to build oases. Who among us would sacrifice the fact that his family, his children are happy, just because there is war in the world? One wants that point of life. One sacrifices, puts money there. Mothers stay awake at night because there is not only the beautiful child to look at; there is also when he poops and doesn't sleep. Think about the sacrifice of raising a child. One doesn't stop having children because the world is abstractly bad. No, one raises them.

One can say the world is unfair, or one can do one's duty in the work one does every day. What effect does it have when you call a call center, wait 20 minutes, and find someone who is rude versus someone who listens to you? Think about how the situation changes because you have a need. Think about when someone produces something beautiful and useful, something that doesn't break after ten days.

And then there's work, family, the circle of friends. A thought translated towards others that is a right thought can be an example. There are priests who, when you go to church, you come out and breathe. And there are priests who, when you go to church, make you not want to go back. You understand that each of us can give examples where something good begins. Don Giussani said that in the era I was talking about, the barbarians were coming and people were fleeing, but those who had faith said, "Since Christ is here, I am staying."

The barbarians are coming? Who cares? The world today is the same. People run away from responsibility. We need people who stay, who build, who are a positive force. Think if these people were also a mayor doing the mayor's job, or a politician serving a community. How life would change. But think if this person then finds himself in charge of Italy. His name is De Gasperi, Schuman, or Adenauer, and they decide to create a Europe against war. Think of someone called Václav Havel, who is in prison and thinks of a book, The Power of the Powerless, in which he talks about change. Think of someone called Lech Wałęsa, who builds a positive place in the communist world to defend workers.

Think of someone who spends 27 years in prison like Mandela, comes out, and instead of seeking revenge, decides to bring a people back together, as the film Invictus tells us. Think of someone called Cardinal Pizzaballa, who is there, and when you ask him what hope there is for a resolution, he says, "None." Because when hatred has killed so many people, it takes decades. But he stays there, together with the Arabs, the Muslims, the Christians. He is a point of reference.

So you understand that this different example can become something important for nations. I just read a book about Aldo Moro. Think about what it means when someone is a politician who tries to serve a people and then is martyred. Then you understand that the example makes the desire not abstract. That Chinese boy during Tiananmen, when the tank advanced, he stood there. We can give examples: monasteries were examples, but today's monasteries are families, they are jobs where I am precise. I realize that at the university, there are people who work and allow you to work, and others who, because the world is unfair, think they can do whatever they want.

One can build small or large places of work, family, beauty. You have built beauty. Starting with Barabbas and everything you have done, one goes to the theater and sees something that stays with them, that changes their soul. Or one can decide that examples are useless because the world doesn't work. It's a shame that afterwards, one doesn't have any more children. Why? Thirty, forty, fifty years ago, were the conditions in which one brought a child into the world better than they are now? They didn't have anything to eat. What has changed is that people no longer have that spirit inside them.

So the second theme is example: we must set examples of a new way of life. It was Bertinotti himself who, when commenting on the day of the Pope's death, said of those people there, "Who are the powerful?" He sounded like Tolstoy in War and Peace, where he says the real puppets of the world are Napoleon and Kutuzov.

Real life is peace. Everyday life is where someone is born who transmits affection. So we must, in our lives, alone and together, always build places where you can say, "I breathed there." It could be a shop where a sales assistant is kind, or a barista who greets you. It's the effort you put into your work. I'm retiring in a year, but I understand many of my colleagues' desire to build and work until the end. You understand that this makes a difference. Desire must build real places, because facts are where hope becomes construction.

And a great man can do that. Now there's this litany against Europe, and it pisses me off. Hey, Europe doesn't matter? Well, I'm one of the first generations in 2000 years that hasn't had war, and it's because of Europe.

Yes, there was war in Ukraine and Slavonia, but not in Europe. And so I am grateful to those who made that possible. Europe is the only place in the world, including the United States, where every person has a constitutional right to health and education. Elsewhere, this is not the case. I want a port like this to grow, so I want there to be politicians and journalists who stop spouting rhetoric about how it doesn't matter.

It matters. You understand that whatever the example, it is our task and the factor that makes the oasis in the desert possible. And with one characteristic: life spreads. The forest advances more than the desert, and the small example becomes big. This is our task.

Moderator: Thank you, Giorgio. Pietro, I wanted to ask you to add something.

Pietro Sarubbi: On this issue of being witnesses, of being a fixed point, I teach at the University of Cinema in Milan. When my life changed and led me to teaching—because before I would never have done it; teaching is crazy, they pay me in a month what I earn in a day making films—if it weren't for a sense of belonging to the people of Christ that leads you to see teaching as a mission... So, I'm not enthusiastic about this new life. They give me the office, I hang my beautiful crucifix above my desk, and there begins terrible mobbing. They steal wallets, but all the crucifixes belong to everyone.

At a certain point, I tell a priest friend of mine, "Listen, I want to leave. I'm not welcome here. I want someone to advise me. Beat someone up? Throw something in the air? Knock a desk over? Call the journalists? What should I do?" And he said, "Don't do anything. Arrive first, leave last. Be friendly to everyone. Smile at everyone." It still moves me now. I want to smash everything.

No, no, no. You stay there, do your thing, do more than your thing. Smile at everyone. Always be available. When someone asks you why you do this, then you'll tell them. Only then can I say why I am of Christ. I did something revolutionary at the university. My students and I have a system where they give us grades, but I give the grades and sign them, while the students give grades and don't sign. It's really like giving a monkey a machine gun. And this is modernity. In this system, I have a 95% satisfaction rate among students, so I'm happy. But these kids want teachers who are real teachers, who are firm and concrete. They come to me and say, "Prof, can I talk to you?" And it's not about the lesson. It's all about me, my life, my sexual identity. And they come and talk to me. With all the fluid teachers around, they come to me. And these kids say, "Prof, you're like a father to me." This is the hardest thing for me to deal with emotionally.

The schedule is fundamental in work. In cinema, it's sacred. But at university, you arrive at nine or ten. No, I do the fourth hour of the academic day. What? You're learning a trade. You have to be here at 8:30 a.m. You pick up the keys, open the classroom, and clean up. I know it's utopian, but I ask them anyway. And to do that, I have to be there at 8:20. It's a sacrifice, but it pays off.

So for everyone, in their own way, you have to be there. Look, public offices are a disaster. With my son this morning, I felt like a thief trying to steal from a department store. I was just asking when my son would come out of the operating room. Do you understand? This is because we've lost the joy, the beauty of work. Charles Péguy wrote wonderful things about the beauty of work. We should recover this. Young and old alike should be witnesses to the beauty of work as a human achievement.

Moderator: I wanted to ask you something because I was intrigued by an issue you mentioned last time you were here a few years ago. Giorgio was talking about making a difference. I remember you told us about when Mel Gibson asked you to be in the film The Passion of the Christ. You didn't want to play Barabbas because the character has no lines. You wanted to play a more important character, like Peter. But Gibson told you that the important thing wasn't the words you would say, but the look you would exchange with Christ in the film. That always struck me. I wanted you to explain it because it seems that sometimes just exchanging glances with someone can make possible this point of difference that Giorgio was talking about.

Pietro Sarubbi: Absolutely. When I made The Passion, I had just starred as the lead in a film about Caruso in America. Then I made a film with Nicolas Cage and Christian Bale. When Mel Gibson called me, I thought it was for Lethal Weapon 5 or something. Then I found out it was this film. I didn't know anything about the apostles. For me, it was all the same. The problem is that we actors are paid by the day and per line. The film was initially about the life of the apostles. I said, "One or the other, it doesn't matter, as long as I'm famous."

Not knowing which apostle I could play, I asked my wife, who is a woman of the church—a real one, a black belt in the Rosary. And she said, "In my opinion, you'll make a good Saint Peter."

"Why?" I asked. She replied with something that had nothing to do with it, but which is typical of wives: "Because of all the apostles, he was the most overweight." I was fine with Saint Peter; there's a lot of money to be made. But when I found out it's Barabbas, I said no and argued for an hour. Mel Gibson thought I was making a philosophical point. Intellectually, I was just embarrassed. It was about money. Then I found out it's actually a humiliating part for an actor, and I asked him to give me a line. He said no. I said, "Why not? You're a director, not a priest." That was my level.

And he said something that struck me deeply: "Think about it. What's the difference between you not speaking and Pilate speaking for 10 minutes in Aramaic that no one will understand? The only thing the audience will understand is what passes through Jesus' gaze into your eyes."

"And what your eyes will receive from Jesus' gaze. And it won't be difficult, because the whole film will pass through Jesus' gaze." Beautiful words now, but incomprehensible then. He thought I was still undecided and picked up on the most venal aspect of the matter. "So if we do it this way, I'll pay you as much as Saint Peter and you'll play Barabbas." Me? When I tell the story, I could say that I replied, "How dare you? I'm an Italian actor!" But the truth? I said yes, because it was a lot of money. Instead of a line, he gave me a very powerful life experience.

One more thing about the power of the gaze. I do volunteer work, taking a theater class in prison for inmates. I'm popular among the prisoners, so I'm their idol. We put on a show, and at the end, one of the prisoners asks if he can say a few words of thanks. This guy is 190 pounds of muscle, someone you'd never want to meet in an alley.

He pulls a note out of his pocket and reads it. It says, "I want to thank Pietro, Luisa, and Cristina, the other two volunteers, because they are the only people who looked at me without judging me, because they looked at me without looking at my crime. They looked at me with love." I joke about everything in life, but you wrote a note to say these four words? He told me he couldn't say it without reading it because he was too emotional. You understand how a very bad, violent person, simply looked at with tenderness, can change his heart. I've met people in prison who have changed completely.

The ideal would be not to do these things, but if you do them and leave the possibility that someone looking at you will change your heart, you are living the Gospel. You are living the possibility for an old man to be born to a new life. This is being there, being witnesses. You can't just say it and not do it. You have to do it, because doing it is more powerful than saying it. Be there like all these gentlemen in purple T-shirts who are here volunteering. The real applause goes to them, the volunteers who do the work. Because when you leave, what will remain in your minds? In addition to the beauty of the exhibition, it will be this purple stain, these unique people in purple.

One last thing. I'm going to the meeting for the first time and I'm taking my university director general with me. There are all these volunteers walking around in different colored T-shirts. And she says to me, "Of course, they have a lot of staff here." They're all volunteers, right? "Yes, they all are," I say. She doesn't believe it. Then there's a man with a broom sweeping the floor. She asks him, "Can I ask you, what's your contract?" He says, "I'm a volunteer. I'm a surgeon." She was struck by this because she came from a world where you needed staff who wrote letters of warning to other staff. What do we build the trust of humanity on? This is having a new heart, which is why I ask you for this last round of applause for the volunteers of this event.

Moderator: Giorgio, I would like you to add something about this, about the gaze.

Giorgio Vittadini: Giussani said that in the moment you look at a person, you cannot cheat. In that moment, the truth appears, like in one of my two favorite paintings in the world, Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew. There is the tax collector, and Jesus does this to him, then Peter does it, and the others are watching. It's a game of glances. In that moment, everything happens.

Why do we say the third category tonight, after desire and example, is event? The novelty that happens is not a thought. It happens in some moment in time, something that, as T.S. Eliot said, breaks time. Something happens: falling in love, the moment when something comes to mind in your work that goes beyond the path, the moment when I meet a person. Everything is a game of glances, of moments in which there is a split in time. This is our true great response to artificial intelligence. Human intelligence draws through the gaze the ability to see the unexpected, what Montale called "the only hope... what is not yet."

There is that moment when something happens. We can move forward with desire, with example, if we look at reality and notice what is new. This is also the nature of progress. When our ancestors lived in caves, someone realized that fire existed, and someone realized that rolling things was better—it's called the wheel. Noticing means being alive. I wouldn't have invented the law of universal gravitation if an apple fell on my head; I would have reported the farmer.

So, the exercise for tonight is to look at what happens, to notice what is new in everything, what breaks the monotony of time. In fact, the formula also applies to John and Andrew in the Gospel: "Follow that man." The theme is the gaze that notices reality. That gesture contains everything that is human; it contains the whole future.

Realizing that there is something more. Ferrari, as you know, was not an engineer. He was a mechanic, a driver, yet he imagined the most beautiful car in the world. So he went to meet the best designer there was. These are moments when time changes. From tomorrow morning, we have to look at reality as something that holds a promise, an encounter, a fact. And this is a game of glances—the glance with which you met your wife, the glance with which, after many boring days at work, there is a point of change, the glance in which one hears a word that finally warms the heart. One decides one's life by who one follows—that is, by who one looks at.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you very much. Tonight, the journey I was referring to at the beginning has truly begun. With Fausto BErtinotti, Giorgio Vittadini and Pietro Sarubbi, we have discovered this issue: that desire must always encounter something unexpected, something that can change everything.

What I would really like to take from this evening is the ability to have such a simple gaze that when faced with what is happening, one recognizes something important for oneself. Without this spark, there is no possibility of starting life again. As Cesare Pavese said, "Beginning again is the most beautiful thing there is." So I thank our guests and all of you here today.