In 2002, the Community of Sant'Egidio, a Rome-based Catholic non-governmental organization, took a fresh approach to the care of people with AIDS in Mozambique. Instead of pursuing a lavishly funded, large-scale effort at prevention, it involved ordinary Mozambicans, European doctors, and lay volunteers in a "triple therapy" treatment program, enabling people who are HIV+ to survive and thrive. The forthcoming book, Sant'Egidio's Dream (May 2024), tells the story of the program, which is now present in 10 countries, has seen patients in 8 million visits to 50 clinics, and has trained 15,000 health care volunteers; through it, 200,000 babies born to mothers who are HIV+ are free of the virus. The DREAM program has become a model for how citizen action, religious faith, and intercultural cooperation can meet public health challenges worldwide.
This event featured author Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, a professor of modern history at the University of Roma Tre; Mario Marazziti, a former Italian parliamentarian who has taken key roles in Sant'Egidio's humanitarian efforts worldwide; and Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, whose decades of experience in development work in Africa has led to regular and fruitful encounters with Sant'Egidio. Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, who wrote the book's afterword, moderated the conversation.
This event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Global Health Institute; and African Studies Program at Georgetown University.
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Mario Marazziti is a deputy in Italy's Camera dei Deputati, a founding member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and a spokesperson for the Community of Sant'Egidio. He is the author of, among others, 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty (2015).
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Previously, she was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006.
Roberto Morozzo Della Rocca is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Roma Tre in Rome, Italy. His work focuses on Italian foreign policy in the twentieth century and on the relationship between religion and nation in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Most recently, he authored Sant'Egidio's Dream: How a Catholic People's Movement Is Meeting the Challenge of AIDS in Africa and Shaping the Future of Global Health (May 2024).
Paul Elie (moderator) is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. His work deals primarily with the ways religious ideas are given expression in literature, the arts, music, and culture in the broadest sense. He is the author of two books, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) and Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).