Dear friends and dear guests,

32 years ago, and more precisely on the 22th of May 1969, as a spaceship flew over the moon, the American astronauts T. Stafford and G. Cernan sent to the earth the announcement of Psalm Eight:
O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen -- Even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!

The decision to choose this psalm didn't occur by chance. Just in the moment when human progress was celebrating its highest triumph by sending astronauts around the moon, one felt the need of meditating about the sense and the meaning of human life.

For this reason, I have chosen this wonderful Psalm when I was entrusted to deliver a meditation. Indeed, what is this film festival if not the highest expression of human creativity?

It is not true that we cannot help but recognize every day that man, because of his yearning for the highest spiritual perfection and for the deepest fulfillment of his being, seems to have become the ruler of the universe?

If this is true, how is it possible not to get astonished when we read this text that 25 centuries ago foreshadowed: You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.

Nonetheless, some questions have arisen to me while reading these last verses.

Is it not ambiguous to repeat these verses in the present-day context when the dominion of man over nature and the whole earth has become blind, cruel and oppressive?

It is not true that God's works and even the dignity of the human being itself have often been destroyed and annulled by a blind selfishness? There is no area of life in which we are not witnessing a bare degradation of those wonderful capacities which God has given to us, either in science or in technology, as well as in other areas.

We ask ourselves continually: What is man? whenever we are confronted with a science, a technology or an art which - instead of considering the human being as a goal - regard them as a mere means to achieve a goal?

Can man's achieved dominion over his world in these last decades be exercised by setting aside each form of respect for human dignity?

So, what is man? A reed, the weakest in nature, but a thinking reed , as B. Pascal said, a mere accident of history that has lasted for billions and billions of years, a Titan without the slightest spiritual landmarks, or a great and wonderful being in relation with God?

The Bible provides this last answer.

Man is a wonderful reality, not because of what he has been capable of realizing, not because of his technological achievements, but because God has been taking care of him, God has been visiting him.
Therefore the sense and the meaning of the human life depend on the fact that God has been mindful of us and has loved us. Man is able to ascend to the highest dignity on the basis of the fact that God has been mindful of him.
The protestant Theologian Paul Tillich repeatedly stated that God is the source and the ground of our being, If we were separated from God, human life would remain an unfathomable secret despite the variety of her wonderful achievements.

In the light of the above considerations, which represent the common denominator of the Bible , we ask ourselves: what kind of consequences can result from all this for us today?

If God has remembered us and has given us dignity, should not this represent an incentive for a new awareness of the responsibility for all of us who are engaged in the film industry or, for that matter, in any other area of life?

To put it in another way: doesn't it follow from all this that with the wonderful tools that God has put to our disposal we should illustrate the dignity of the human being and remember whence we come and what the goal of our lives is?

It is not true that, whenever man is not put at the center of the interest, there is the danger of a dehumanization?

Man, wrote Abraham Heschel , is between God and the animals. Both man and animals have received the blessing of God, but only to man has been given the ability to rule the earth.

Every time one forgets this principle, there is always the danger that we have given up our vocation to be a little lower than the angels.

Living Man, according to Irenaeus, is the Honor of God, that is to say , the mirror in which the Omnipotence of God is reflected.

Honor therefore to man, to the true actor of this film festival, Honor to his Dignity, to his Creativity, to his Spirit, to his striving towards transcendence, and at the same time, honor and glory to the Almighty God who has made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honor.

Written of the Film's festival von Locarno 2002

Rev. Paolo de Petris e-mail address: