Fine Anno Scolastico a Kofele

Pubblico il discorso tenuto da Padre Angelo in occasione della chiusura dell'Anno Scolastico.

Closing of the School Year 2007

Dear children of the kindergarten, dear boys and girls of the primary school, dear teachers, dear workers and dear parents, welcome to this day of feast.
When we greet each other, we always say and repeat insistently: Peace, peace be with you, go in peace, pass the day in peace, pass the night in peace. It is the first word which I have learned in Oromo language.
What does peace mean?
First of all is the absence of fighting, and then respect for the other person, accepting the other with his differences of sex, age, culture, ideas, language, and religion. Tolerance is the beginning of the long way which leads to the real peace among men and women. If you like to clime a ladder you always start with the first step, you cannot jump and start with the third or the forth.
Our Catholic project of education, starting from the first year of kindergarten should aim firstly to form children, boys and girls who grow up with this sense of respect and tolerance.
Learning many thinks: mathematics, languages, chemistry, physics, history, etc. and not loving peace, this fundamental principle of life, is to form a man or a woman who may be very intelligent, who may have great success in life, who may rule the country, but who will be not a man of peace, which means a troublemaker.
What our country really needs are peace makers, in order to create a peaceful Country, where we may enjoy living in; a Country without hatred among different cultures, different people, different religions, where the difference is seen rather a richness than a division.
Hatred and division create poverty. Unity and peace create richness.
In front of our school I have seen two flags, and that is right, but a third one is missing: the flag of peace.
Next year you will find three flags in front of our school.
We are happy to be Oromo, very happy to be Ethiopians, but above all we are delighted to be man and women of peace, citizen of the entire world.
Thank you all.