The San’Egidio movement

Andrea Riccardi,
one of the founders of the San’Egidio Community

Saint Egidio is a movement founded in Rome in 1968 by lay people who heard the powerful call of Jesus’ love for the poor. The movement aims to give this love a face through friendship with the poor of the cities. The combination of prayer and involvement is one of the most important characteristics of the spirituality of the Saint Egidio movement. The members of the community live in communal brother/sisterhood. They do not make vows and do not live in a communal house. Each lives their own individual family and professional life. On a local and international level the involvement is directed to ecumenism, the dialogue between religions and the solidarity between North and South. In armed conflicts Saint Egidio works for peace and reconciliation. Saint Egidio achieved worldwide recognition for her mediation efforts in, among other places, Mozambique in Africa. In the Benelux the Saint Egidio movement was started in the Eighties in Antwerp, Belgium. Here she works with children and the elderly in the poorer parts of the city, also with the homeless, refugees and people from other countries. In different parts of Belgium and the Netherlands communities were have been formed in the past years. The communal evening prayer shapes the soul of the community and is an event open to everybody searching for a moment of reflection and time to listen to the Gospel.

Meetings at he Church of Our saviour take place once a month on a Friday evening at the church, beginning with singing at 19.00 and followed by a service at 19.30 and a chance for discussion afterwards. The dates of the meetings are advertised in the bulletin. For more information see www.santegidio.org (the site is available in a range of languages).
Our Parish Contact is Jacques van der Meer - 070-329 2049.

Its impressive contribution in "spiritual diplomacy" for the cause of world peace has been awarded the 1999 Niwano Prize for Peace, sponsored by the Japanese Buddhist Association Risho Kosei Kai, founded in 1978.
The award is named after Nikyo Niwano, one of the non-Catholic lay observers at Vatican Council II. Other religious groups have been given this award in the past, among them, the Neve Shalom community of Israel.

The award acknowledges the San Egidio Community's efforts to promote annual meetings for peace, in continuation of the spirit created during the first day of prayer among religions convoked by John Paul II in Assisi, 1986. In particular, the Risho Kosei Kai foundation mentions, the work done by this movement in Mozambique where, thanks to its intervention, peace agreements between the government and the guerrilla were concluded in 1992, after 15 years of a bloody civil war. Its action was also decisive in bringing peace to Guatemala.