Nicolini Zani report Christian and Muslim youth

In mid-July 2024, the monastic community of Bose welcomed twenty-four young people (eleven Muslims and thirteen Christians) between the ages of 18 and 33 who wished to share an experience of fraternity at the monastery.

The participants came from Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto. Accompanied by a formation team, they spent four days in an intense, and for some unprecedented, experience of encounter and dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

The rhythm of prayer marked the days: the Christian monastic liturgy, to which our community welcomed the young Muslims, and Islamic ritual prayer, to which the Muslims welcomed the Christian participants, other guests, and some brothers and sisters from the monastic community.

The experience of fraternity was deepened through sharing some hours of work with brothers and sisters from the monastic community in the different work areas—the vegetable garden, the orchard, the flower gardens, the jam workshop, and the bakery.

The sharing of meals provided another valuable opportunity for meeting and communion, in particular, the meal on the last day, which the participants also prepared.

Finally, mutual knowledge and esteem were nourished by two rich and valuable moments of shared reflection and discussion. The first was devoted to getting to know each other's spiritual traditions through a discussion on Christian and Islamic prayer. The second gave the participants an occasion to listen to and interact with an imam and an Augustinian nun.

These various activities provided the young Christian and Muslim participants an occasion to become friends and planted seeds for a deeper and broader sense of interreligious fraternity between these two communities of faith.

This program for young people was the outgrowth of a summer school “Weaving Community,” which also took place at Bose. It was organized in collaboration with the Piedmont Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue. A video made up of a collage of photos taken during this summer school can be viewed here

Matteo Nicolini-Zani is a monk of the Community of Bose (Italy) and coordinator of the Italian Commission of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Chinese Language and Literature. His main interest of research is the history of Christianity in China, a topic upon which he published several articles and books. His most recent book is The Luminous Way to the East: Texts and History of the First Encounter of Christianity with China, published by Oxford University Press (2022).