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I deal with religions

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despite not having had a confessional

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or even a religious upbringing

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but, in fact, I mainly deal with them
out of a personal interest,

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and above all

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because I have long been investigating
the topic on a radio broadcast.

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Of course it is always
somewhat embarrassing -

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and I have noticed it
even these days, even last night

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and then again this morning

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to talk about religions
to a vast and composite audience,

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because among you there are for sure
those whose faith is unquestioning

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and whom I certainly
do not wish to offend,

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and also those who - with good cause -

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believe that religions
are a remnant of the past,

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and I have no desire to contradict them,

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and there are those who believe
that religions are but useless foppery

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and there is no point
in taking an interest in them

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as they are only capable
of leading to violence and destruction,

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and this too makes sense.

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Then talking about religions

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is complicated because in this category

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we channel an endless series
of stories and experiences.

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There are religions
that have gods and godless religions,

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polytheistic religions
and monotheistic religions,

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there are religions
which have disappeared and new faiths,

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religions viewed
as an entirely private matter

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and religions as aspects
of one’s identity.

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Besides, every religion is organized
into an infinite space of schools,

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sects, churches, derivations, etc. etc.

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and then again,
what do we mean by religions?

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Do we mean the leaders,
as they say, of the major religions,

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or are we speaking of,

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I don't know, of a street priest,

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of a monk seeking refuge in his hermitage,

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of a curia cardinal
or a fanatical fundamentalist?

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In short, there are many things
that can be said.

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So, for this reason I would like
to suggest two paths tonight,

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because you could lose yourself,

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just like in front
of any other human experience,

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think of scientific experience,
literature, society, history.

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But, exactly, religious matters
belong to the time of man and,

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as a result, we can find
some trace, at least,

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of ancient wisdom,

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which may have a meaning,
perhaps, for humanity as a whole.

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The first step of this journey
consists of the Veda,

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a very ancient body of texts

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of the Aryan peoples
from the north of India,

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written between 1500

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and 1000 years the common era,

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which gather, in fact,
various forms of knowledge.

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Look, I just want to read out a fragment,

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‘"In the beginning there was neither
non-existence nor existence.

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There was no air then,
nor yet the sky beyond.

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What enveloped it? Where?

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Who was it protecting?

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Was there water, unfathomable and deep?

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At that time there was neither
death nor immortality,

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there was no sign of night or day.

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From where did this creation arise?

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Whether he fashioned it or not,

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he who watches over it in the highest
of heavens, he alone knows,

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or perhaps he does not know.’

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Here, then, you see,
this is how the thinking of man begins,

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with questioning,

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with a sense of wonder, a desire to know,

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but also the awareness of not knowing.

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I think that there is something impressive

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in this questioning and in this doubting.

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What moved and gave rise
to the great religious traditions

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is what moved and gave rise
to all human knowledge,

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up to space research or the web,
the wireless and so on,

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be it science, writing
artistic representation,

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or the measuring of the human being
within the universe.

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I therefore believe
that we should treasure

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the questions of ancient wisdom,

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because they are the same ones
that infuse every kind of research

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the human being embarks on,
even in our time.

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We should treasure their appearance
on the world scene with,

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you heard, a sense of wonder
at being alive,

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at being something in this life.

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These questions must then be treasured,

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but not fossilized as they have often been
by religious institutions,

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not codified, but forced wide open,

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allowing for a multiplicity
of answers from which to choose,

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as each of us will choose a path
because we cannot take them all,

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but knowing that instead
there are many others.

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Only by doing so will
we allow air, wind, and breath

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to flow through those questions,

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without suffocating them

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in the asphyxiating
enclosure of sacristies,

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sects, extremisms,

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with intelligence, with a critical stance,

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always refuting ideas
which are too complete in themselves,

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opening up new horizons and new freedoms.

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Think of how humiliating it would be,
as it is sometimes is humiliating,

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in the history of human beings,

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to reduce one's freedom,

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to reduce even the free use of thought,

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in the name of a creed,
of a belief, of a principle.

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This has happened very often
in the history of religions,

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but the foundation of faiths
lies in something else,

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it lies in openness.

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The other path that I want to suggest
moves instead from a different input,

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from a different impulse
that has contributed to creating,

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forging, shaping,
giving birth to religions,

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that is the impulse to alleviate
the suffering of human beings,

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to give meaning to pain,

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to extinguish it wherever possible,

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to contain the destructive
forces inhabiting it,

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to try to create a community,

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to build cities, to create society,
to build coexistence.

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It is true that in history
religious traditions have caused wars,

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sustained violence, encouraged abuses,
instigated destruction,

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but this has happened and always happens,

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it continues to happen,
when we stop questioning,

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when we believe we own the truth
and stop looking for it,

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when instead of an ungraspable,
an unknowable God,

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we build, with our own hands,
an endless series of idols,

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an endless series of golden calves.

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And we would be well-advised to remember

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that it is not only idolaters
who construct a false image of God,

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but that our lives are peopled with idols:

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suffice it to think of the idol
of money, of possessions,

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of the idol that each of us is to himself.

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"Lord, deliver me from myself,"
runs a poem by Fernando Pessoa.

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So, how can we avoid turning
God into an idol?

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‘The face of God cannot be seen,’
is written in the books of the Torah

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and therefore it cannot be seen it means
that we are not allowed to imagine God,

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we are not allowed to make fetishes
or figurines depicting Him,

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to presume we know Him, to delude
ourselves that He is on our side.

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Mind you, this is a commandment,

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it is the second of the commandments,

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after "I am the Lord thy God",

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which means that there is a God -
provided He exists naturally -

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and a God alone for all of mankind.

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Then there is the third commandment,

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‘You shall not take the name
of the Lord your God in vain,’

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and so, strictly speaking,

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since man nothing true can know about God,

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better never to pronounce His name

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and in fact the name of God is unknowable,

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it is contained in four
unpronounceable letters

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and think that even in the Islamic
tradition there are 99 names of God,

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but they are not nouns,
they are adjectives, that is attributes;

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then there is a hundredth name
that nobody knows,

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because only God knows it.

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Let us consider what this means:

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a God whose face cannot be seen,

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whose name cannot be pronounced

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is a God whose borders are open wide,

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he is a God who lives
in the depths of human hearts,

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but also in the abyss of the universes.

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However, of that God or of that something

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to which we have given
and we give the name of God,

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there is a trace
in the quests of human beings,

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there is a written trace in human history,

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in the strategies
used to build a city of men,

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where conflicts
can be mediated, elaborated,

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where the freedoms of the ones
interlaces with the freedoms of others,

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where a life of humanity
and not of bestiality is possible.

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Another text,

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another statement,
‘No one has ever seen God’.

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This is written in the Prologue
to the Gospel of John

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and yet another letter from John reads,

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‘No one has ever seen God’
and continues immediately afterwards,

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"If we love one another,

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God abides in us, and His love
has been perfected in us...".

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So let's try to understand
this implication here too.

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No one has ever seen God.

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Full stop.

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If we love one another,

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God remains in us
and his love is perfected in us.

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So what matters is not
imagining God, what God is,

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but that word which is defined as "love",

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the love we know how to exchange,

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the love we know how to build,
the love we are capable of feeling.

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But, let’s be honest,
what an embarrassing word,

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what an abused and debased word.

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Sometimes, personally,
just hearing the word makes me sick:

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it is an abstract word,
uttered rather than put into practice.

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And let’s have no illusions
about the human creature.

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We know what we are made of,

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we know that we are a mixture
of tensions, love and hatred.

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I like to recall the words of Pascal.

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“What a chimera then is man.

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What a novelty,
what a monster, what a chaos,

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what a contradiction, what a prodigy!

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Judge of all things, an imbecile worm;

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depository of truth
and sewer of error and doubt;

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the glory and the scum of the Universe".

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But the human being
is also capable of that love,

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of that attention
to the other, of that care,

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of that responsibility for the other

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that makes him human
and that is what counts.

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This is what also counts
for the God of the Bible,

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who says, through the mouths
of his prophets,

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"I hate, I despise
your religious festivals;

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your assemblies are a stench to me.

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Even though you bring me
burnt offerings and grain offerings,

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I will not accept them.

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Though you bring choice fellowship
offerings, I will have no regard for them.

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Away with the noise of your songs!

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I will not listen
to the music of your harps.

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But let justice roll on like a river,

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righteousness like a stream
that never fails!”.

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Honesty, justice, non-harming,
the building of good things,

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are part of the human life
described in the Scriptures.

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For this reason, I believe,

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they should be read, studied, understood,

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interpreted in a comment that never ends,

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because it grows with us,

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with each human being who approaches them,

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just as we grow

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with the frequentation
of those words

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and that continuous interpretation.

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We will realize, then,

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how there is a thread that unites
the Scriptures and the traditions

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of all times and all places and it is,

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precisely, the attention
to the human being.

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You can see it in the Synoptic Gospels,

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when someone asks Jesus
what the greatest commandment is,

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he puts together, in the story,

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two propositions from the Old Testament,

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"Love the one God" and "You shall love
your neighbour as yourself".

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He says this is a single commandment.

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Which means that if one loves God,
if someone says he loves God,

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it is not true if he does not
also love his neighbour

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and if he loves his neighbour
this is enough to love God too.

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If we widen our gaze beyond
the Jewish and Christian scriptures,

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we see that in all, but really in all -

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in all wisdom, not only the Scriptures -
we find similar statements,

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for example in the great Indian poems
and in the discourses of the Buddha,

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in the thoughts of Confucius,
in the maxims of the Tao, in Jainism,

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in Zoroastrianism, in the sayings
of the Prophet Muhammad,

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in Latin wisdom,

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up to the Declaration of Human Rights,

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“All men endowed with reason
and with conscience

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shall assume responsibilities
in a spirit of solidarity

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towards each other and all, families,
communities, nations and religions.

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What you do not want done to yourself,
do not do to others.”

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This is, ultimately,
the program of any religion

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and it does not seem
to be a trifling program,

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it does not seem to be negligible.

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This is why I believe
that it is worth, today,

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to still question
the traces of the faiths,

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I do not believe that we should
get rid of religions;

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I believe we should get rid
of any dumb reading of religions,

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of any opaque listening,
with an ear obstructed by nettle,

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as poetess Nelly Sachs says.

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In other words, I believe
that everyone should feel responsible

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for the heritage of tradition
he has inherited;

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indeed, each of us
should become that tradition

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and take the risk
of interpreting ancient texts

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that is up to our present,

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with respect but without subjection;

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with awareness but also with audacity.

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Regenerate, revive ancient words,
reread them in the light of the present.

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I want to close by reading to you
a verse from Deuteronomy which says,

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"This command I give you today
is not too high for you,

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nor beyond your reach;

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it is not in the sky,
so you can say how can I reach it;

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nor is it beyond the sea,

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so that you can say
but whoever can ever bring it to me;

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indeed, this word is very close to you,

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it is in your mouth and in your heart
that you may put it into practice.

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See, today I place
life and good before you,

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death and evil, blessing and curse:

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therefore choose life, so that you
and your descendants may live.”

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So it is, I think, also up to us to choose
a life or at least to try.

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I hope I have moved your beliefs
at least marginally. Thank you.

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(Applause)