It is very nice to meet here all European Brethern, united by three Lights, Wisdom, Beauty and Strength, over any boundaries, working and discussing together, to make Europe a different place.

The Freemasonry lives deeply in the soul of European People, and Masonry has always taught how to live and how to educate the Man in its Thought and Humanity.

We can find in the story of our Old Europe the biggest Ideas which were part of the Thought and Action as well as Justice, celebrated by Freemasons.

When I have received the Theme of the Symposium from our Brethern A. and Mo, I have realized the importance of these arguments, but also the danger to treat such sensitive matter, such as Freemasonry and Union Of  European People.

For me it is all about a question, to choose the  method of researching, the right way, which is common for all Men who dress an Apron and who are willing to serve Humanity and not only to have privileges or collect Medals.

Freemasonry has always been in its Destiny a space of confrontation that has united European People even before the Idea of European Union was born.

Freemasonry has always imagined a Great Temple which could join People from the Baltic to the Greece, with Personalities like Federico the Second, Templars and many others Illustrious People who have given to Humanity the Life Wisdom and have united differences and oppositions of Languages, Culture, Politics and Religion.

This Truth unites us today deeply in a sentence : “You are My Brother“.

Our Brotherhood has no boundaries. Hegel used to say: “The Brotherhood is an open Sea“. In fact, it is a chain that goes over everything, that will build a better tomorrow.

In the past, our Fraternity played a  balance role between European People. Today, here in Cagliari, we have an ideal Chess Floor made of different Speakers coming from North to South and always more from the East of Europe. It is a symbol that we sculpture in the  Stone of our Meeting, with the willing to build new experiences.

As often happens during our Ritual Works to leave our Temple richer than we were before, so I am sure that this Symposium will let us grow and improve our knowledge that will allow us to design our Future, which needs our Head before our Hands.

This was our Master Idea when, three years ago, our Illustrious Bro:. Luigi L\ proposed to organize such an important Meeting to unite Brethern from the Lodges named Europe, from different European Countries.

These Lodges have never came together under this nice Flag in which Romanian Brethern decided to sew on: “Europa Cum Mente”.

It was a real  challenge  to invite to Riccione Lodges with different culture and mentalities, in  One  Meeting, asking us “Why  are  we called  Europe?”

Today we are all happy to be here in Cagliari in such a well organized Meeting by our Cagliari’s Brethern , but we are also happy because we know that  our next Challenges will be in 2011 in France and then Vienna and so on, anywhere the Good Wind will bring us to face each other, and not only to watch from the window as the Freemasonry Spring arrives. We would  like to be part of it and build personally the New Horizon.

We want to give a meaning to our journey, working on the European Project, which means studying and knowing the Story and Origins of this establishment, especially about Cohabitation between European People, knowing that there are differences which today can become an important factor to live together and better.   

Our Stories  are like a river that keeps flowing reminding us our tradition, but our Future depends on what we are able to image. We have two choices, to manage our Nostalgia and our Present or to make a new Battle and steps into the Future which is definitely our Common Destiny.
Since the Origins of the Modern Craft we can find  Faith  in Reason and Sense, as a vehicle  to an Elevation of the Men Spirit to Philanthropy and Pacific cohabitation between all countries and people over Illuminated management of our Culture and Story .

That means: “ The Strength of Dialog”. This reminds me about the story of the Modern Craft in England, where the Grand Lodge of London has united the Stuart Catholics and the Orange Protestant, who were deeply in Political Contrast, in one Symbolic Structure like Brethern under a common Faith in the Great  Architect of the Universe.

This Spirit has crossed La Manche – English Channel towards the  Continental European Lodges.

From this moment on, all European National Lodges had their own story  linked to their Nation, People and Culture. Here we are, in the Full Illuminism Period, an intellectual activity that brought the biggest intellectual influence in such a wide geographical extension.

Masonic development was contemporary to the Illuminism. Obviously this development had many difficulties in its diffusion to the South of our Continent, because of the Church hostility to this Argument.

The ideas of Cosmopolitism and Free Society and Laicity which  belong to Illuminates from Baviera and Adam Weishaupt, who had a great passion to the ritual of Initiation, couldn’t anymore be stopped, even not in France.

Freemasonry proposed itself as an  unifying element of different thoughts, joining the great ideas of the most important Illuminists of this period like Voltaire and Diderot (both Freemason).

Like this Period, a great importance to the development of the Masonic Philosophy, was the Period of  Romanticism, which gave to Humanity many great Masons like Fichte, Herder, Goethe, Mozart or Heidn who helped to increase discussion waking up the conscience against dogmas who wanted to keep the population in ignorance and darkness.

Freemasonry, in Italy, after this Period, gave a great contribution to the creation of the new Italian leadership  class that look forward to give its country an European thought.

These were also the years of a hard conquest of Laicity, meant as an union of Science and Freedom, which seeks the use in all fields, from the Language to the Painting, from the Music and Aesthetics to  the Art Works that  fill today the most important  museums of the world.

Finally, the ideas and values of modernity permitted a pacific coexistence between different cultures.

A Mason like Victor Hugò, Emanuel Kant and others, with their ideas of permanent peace and cohabitation between European People, were the Corner Stones which were in use many years after for the grounding of the Declaration made by Robert Shuman on May the 9th 1950, that aim to give to Europe a peaceful future and prosperity.

Next year we will celebrate 150 years of “Italian Unity “ an important Anniversary for us.

We are very proud and pleased to yhank our former Gran Master Giuseppe Garibaldi, for the noble and patriotic Masonic Ideas which he had transmitted to many European countries, we also are thankful to Giuseppe Mazzini who has, already in 1831, founded the Movement ”La Giovine Italia” and only three years later, in Bern, “La Giovine Europa“, a great concretisation of the ideas about a free European Nation.

These Countries were divided, for centuries, by many Wars.

Today, 60 years after the Robert Shuman Declaration, which was the Starting Point of an ambition Project to unite European Countries to a common target, today we are here, in this Symposium, asking us: “What has and will have to do Europeans and European Freemasonry?“

Go over all differences.  Knowing  how to find what unites us, over everything that separates us.

Together, Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Romanians, Italians, French, Spanish, Portuguese and  Austrians, we are all Brethern through the Initiation to the Light. 

Meeting and initiatives as this one from today are part of a reflection of what we can do and in which matter we can better help and contribute to our Institution.

European People has to design, a common Journey, making space to what has to come, to the integration between populations, by the culture that unites, deleting the xenophobe hate that only breaks the Bridges of Meeting.

The Idea of our Bro:. Luigi Liverani was that every European State will be expected to have a Lodge named Europe. To me this is a wonderful Idea that has to become true as soon  possible, so that it can also sensitize Freemasons to such an important matter.

Personally I have other Questions:

• “The Globalization in which we live is it helping us?“
• “What did happen with the Social Welfare in which we have believed?“

In a very short time, something like ten years, structures and the speed of actions are drastically changed. Instead of dreams, we have fears!

“Are we constructing again the Tower of Babel? Or we will have to build a different kind of World in which our children will live tomorrow?”

Freemasons has to search answers to this questions.

Certainly we would like not to abandon the idea of Welfare, which is an excellent Target, but also, in a matter of solidarity, we have to find solution as less Eurocentrism, but more adapting  to the  other needs of Man. This suggestion was also made by our Ill:. Bro:. Morris Ghezzi in his book entitled “In the Sign  of  Compass“.

The fact that we have here so many Brro:. from Eastern  Europe is a new reality !

The Truth which is in front of us, it’s an important event, an important Corner Stone that now needs everybody else's Stones.

Thanks to the wise politics made by our Gran Master Gustavo Raffi and by our Grand Oriente, in the past years we were able to help the Refoundation of many Grand Lodges from Eastern Europe, after a long “Sleeping Period” forced by the totalitarian regime in their countries.

Who could imagine that today here with us stand the Brethern from Sarajevo and Belgrade together? A great victory and not only symbolically.

This are the facts that can make proud the Grand Orient of Italy. Our Lodges that has the name of Europe are giving a great contribution to our Institution and all of us gathering here have no problem to communicate, we are united by the Liberty of our Thought and our Actions.   

The Freemason is a Man of Doubt who is searching Light! He is a Free Man who won’t get in to compromise with his proper conscience, and he is a dreamer of “Possible Dreams”. 

A Freemasonry, as often our G\M\ Gustavo Raffi used to say, cannot give us guarantees, but guarantees us that we will never go back to old positions.

Our basic Principles of Liberty, Fraternity and Tolerance gather in our Temples Men with different Faith, Ideas and Life Conditions, that can be an example to all European People who are searching a better and human society.

In the Glory of Grand Architect of the Universe.

                                                                                    Liborius C\