Dearest members of the “large” AMU family, we have heard it said many times in recent years, and perhaps many of us have firmly supported it, that we are living in a time of epochal change, profound and uncertain about what awaits us. Who knows, perhaps the experience we are living through in these weeks, and whose outcomes and conclusions we cannot yet predict in its deepest impacts, will one day be remembered as one of the dates of passage from one era of history to another? Certainly on October 12, 1492 (just to give a trivial example), an exhausted Christopher Columbus and his crew had much more in mind than even remotely imagining that what they were experiencing that day would make that year (although it is a conventional fact and therefore very relative) the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern era. But what matters is that the situation we are experiencing now, for many people a bearer of profound dramas with the loss of loved ones or very serious economic and work difficulties, has also made us aware that we cannot live indifferent to each other, both at a family and community level, as well as at the level of large state and supranational communities (although not all governments have understood this to the necessary consequences). What better wish, bearer of authentic hope, than that of being able to commit ourselves with renewed enthusiasm to this dream? The events of the Christian Easter that we are about to celebrate in an unprecedented and surprising way are the highest expression of Hope: when life conquers death and opens the doors to salvation for all. From all of us at AMU, staff and members of the governing bodies, our most sincere wishes that the Hope of these holidays may become for each and every one a reason for joy and a stimulus to start again, overcoming the uncertainties and pains that so many of you have suffered.
