Journalist: So, not enough is known about the artistic and cultural heritage of the Eastern Churches? Cardinal Gugerotti: No, it is not known. Decade… - Claudio Gugerotti

The Eastern world observes Lent very strictly. One of the things that Easterners are most passionate about is knowing how much you fast. It may be a naive question, but generally it stems from the perception that fasting is a sign of how seriously you take God and how much you understand that God is the only essential thing. Therefore, you must distance yourself from all the little idols that systematically tend to replace Him. This is what fasting is really about: abstaining from what risks becoming the centre of the day, taking the place of God. Prayer and fasting, which increase during Lent, are a reaffirmation for Easterners that life belongs to God, that space belongs to God.

(About Syria) It is a destroyed country. Twelve years of war, and above all the results of certain aspects of the sanctions, have made the people miserable. I was in Syria 25 years ago, I don't recognise it, it's the third world. Salaries are almost non-existent, there is no work, there is huge emigration, cities are destroyed by bombing; I can't see the difference between bombing and the fall caused by the earthquake. People are worn out, they have no hope. A bit of Eastern fatalism helps, where they say, ‘It's okay, it happened, let's hope for God’: Muslims say it, Christians say it with the same phrase in Arabic. The current situation of war and sanctions makes it very difficult to help them: it takes a long time to get visas, sending money is impossible, and then there are areas that are under different controls. And there are some groups that don't let anything through, except to those they decide. And I must say that many European countries also go through dissident groups on the ground because they have a more similar political position, but they do not check where this money goes and to whom. If it were not for some Franciscans who, with mental gymnastics and an infinite imagination that only Easterners have, manage to find more or less legal alternative channels, people would have nothing. I went there first and foremost to bring the Holy Father's blessing, closeness and affection, but also to provide practical help and to tell the organisations what they should not do when sending aid.

(About the Gaza war and Israelian raids) We have returned to the law of the jungle, well represented by very modern weapons, but it is still the law of the club. We hoped that, especially with Humanism, the Renaissance and the great cultures of antiquity, it had been overcome, but we realise that this is not the case for the moment. [...] The feeling is that hatred has grown exponentially in recent times. The delicate problem is that there is no international body capable of mediating. There are individual bodies that decide to be the masters of the world. This is another issue. This is not the spirit in which the United Nations or other organisations were created, nor, to tell the truth, the European Union. There is a strong institutional weakness in international organisations.