News

Below is the text of the Anci press release from Tuesday, Jan. 21:

ROME – The construction of a network inspired by the principle of fraternity, through the establishment of local working tables involving the various social actors present on the territory, with associations representing citizens and the third sector. This is the main objective of the agreement between Anci nazionale and the Fratelli tutti Foundation, presented in Rome by their respective presidents, Gaetano Manfredi mayor of Naples and Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. Speaking at the presentation were Father Francesco Occhetta, secretary general of the Foundation, and for Anci, vice president Roberto Pella, delegate for Internal Areas and Sport, secretary general Veronica Nicotra and Luca Masneri, mayor of Edolo and member of the national council.

The understanding aims to support the spread of the culture of collaboration and integration of all public actors-including municipalities-that make up the institutional ecosystem, in a context of loyal inter-institutional collaboration to protect the common good. Specifically, municipal governments are invited to sign a special agenda committing them to carry forward the principles of the Fratelli tutti Foundation initiative, which in June 2023 organized the first World Meeting on Human Fraternity. A new meeting is scheduled for September 12 and 13, 2025, with the participation of mayors from all parts of the world, intellectuals and representatives of politics and culture.

As part of the initiatives under the agreement, a cross-cutting theme will be chosen each year on which to develop the work of individual municipalities, starting with the issue of health poverty among the elderly. In light of the serious crisis in the participation of young people in political life and in administrations, special attention will be paid to the 18-34 age group. Acknowledging the pedagogical and civic value of the commitment required by the role of municipal administrator, municipalities are committed to fostering the exercise of active and responsible citizenship, as a tool of political education above all and of social responsibility towards others.

“Fragility and poverty are the great challenges of contemporaneity. As mayors we touch every day with our own hands how the difficulties of living are increasingly large, extensive and difficult to intercept,” pointed out Anci President Manfredi. Just think of the most vulnerable, lonely elderly, non-integrated migrants, new material poverty or linked to other emergencies such as housing, education and health. Issues for which a bureaucratic and organizational response is not enough, we need an active and effective alliance: there is often a lot of solidarity, but disorganized. Aware that the principle of fraternity, which we share with Fratelli tutti, is not only an ethical and moral commitment, we will advocate to raise awareness among the widest membership of municipalities so that they put the idea of fraternity and sharing at the center of their policies. The goal is that this method can spread from the bottom up: if we want to make sure that these principles can overcome an individualistic and selfish vision of society, we have to make them start from the people.”

“Among others, the Fratelli tutti Foundation has created a table of local administrators. Thanks to them, starting with the young mayors, we have transformed a dream into a vision by making it concrete in everyday life: to awaken fraternity,” explained Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, president of the Fratelli tutti Foundation and Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. ”Democracy needs an adjective next to it. And participation makes sense if the term fraternity is placed next to democracy. There is a risk of a future of despair instead of a future of hope. Fraternity from this point of view returns a horizon in which to compose the thousand variables of our time for a more favorable development.”

Read more (in Italian):

Agenzie, Ansa, Avvenire, the Gazzetta delle Valli and the Giornale di Brescia.

Read the front page of the Giornale di Brescia.

Watch the interview of Canale 21 at Card. Mauro Gambetti (in Italian).