YEAR-END SPEECH OF THE PIETAS’ PRESIDENT GIUSEPPE BARBERA DECEMBER 31, 2020 AT 11:15pm

Good evening to all, friends, partners and members of the Traditional Pietas Association.
Thank you for being present and for following, as always, this moment that unites us on the last day of the year, which is the day of the closing speech; the closing of a cycle and the opening of a new cycle, as regularly happens. As has been the case for some years now, it is customary, at the request of several members of the association, to hold this meeting. This year we have even decided to project it directly live, so that we can all feel close to each other, despite the distance imposed by the current decrees, but in any case we are close in our hearts and this we always know at all times and on all days, but this year we are close helping each other with the telematic means.
It was a very important year for Pietas, a year in which several activities took place. Unfortunately the sudden arrival of COVID, certainly, slowed down, but despite this we managed to go on, despite this we managed to entertain ourselves, for example on April 21 we celebrated the Birth of Rome, not only with the ritual activities, but also with the usual conference, for the occasion of the commemoration of the birthday of our beloved URBE, we managed to hold a conference of international mold directly online. I say international because we have had many members who have followed us from abroad, we have had speakers who have participated from abroad and who weave with us lasting and continuous relationships.
Without a shadow of a doubt the year 2773 a.v.c. opened in January with a truly profound and important event, since with our Greek brothers of Thyrsos, who like us follow the cult of the ancient gods, we met in Rimini and fulfilled the wish of an old friend of ours, Vlassis Rassias, founder of the present Hellenic groups, and whose wish was to visit the tomb of Giorgio Gemistos Plethon and to carry out at it the honors sacred to the soul and the spirit of this man who for us is a DIVUS, that is a fulfilled person; and as per Roman tradition, the good people who pass away are considered Divi.
Plethon in the Renaissance was an important character, a person who even managed to involve the ecclesiastical groups led by cardinals, by people of substance, he managed to involve them in the reconstruction of the gentile tradition. So he pushed for a rebirth of a gentility, a rebirth of tradition, arguing that the society of the future would return to the cult of the gods. His predictions, in our opinion, are very accurate and it is not by chance that we have also involved Riccardo Campa, professor of sociology in Cracow, who studies the society of the future and who also maintains that the process of return to the cult of the gods has already begun.
The meeting with our Greek brothers in Rimini was beautiful, very profound, we were numerous, we had this occasion of ritual, of meeting and contact with this fundamental figure of the Italian Renaissance, which is the starting point for them as much as for us. So the point of union in the modern era between the Greek religion and the Roman religion is precisely him, Plethon, a neo-Platonist of exceptional visions, and whom I invite everyone to deepen.
Subsequently, we immediately began to do events, meetings and then there was the presentation of the magazine Pietas, “Orphism in the Nebrodi”, a fundamental research, because we have begun to map all the ancient traditional rites survived in Italy at the local level in different regions and the involvement and participation of Pietas with these rites with the communities clearly starts a fundamental awareness for a return to a gentility in the modern era. This was a very successful event and certainly it is a great work that the ATP is doing to verify, analyze, reduce and then in the end map what has survived from the ancient world looking at today throughout the country to show that our tradition is not a dead tradition, but it is a living one.

So even in that the year 2020 has been a generous year with us, unfortunately we cannot say the same for the rest of humanity who is suffering this terrible pandemic, which is bringing morals, ethics, social relations and human relations to their knees.
And here comes the need to make the end of the line to a fundamental point that is the return of the religion of the fathers; and so despite the difficulties given by the advance of this evil disease, we have managed to found new Temples; we have concluded a small temple dedicated to the god Mars, we have dedicated a small temple to the Nymph Egeria, nymph of health, that in this particular moment all of us kindly pray and venerate so that it may help us in overcoming the disease; to date, in our community, no one has been defeated by the disease, but rather whoever has been touched by it, has overcome the disease with great success, returning to normal life.
In addition to the Nymph Egeria we also had a very important event, the construction of the temple of Apollo in Sicily. Sicily is a culturally rich land; it is a magical land, its triangular shape is not accidental, the presence of Etna and the island of Vulcano symbolize underground energies that come out manifesting to the world. The island of Sicily is in our opinion a crucial and fundamental point for the Mediterranean; there, there is the temple dedicated to the god Apollo that has attracted attentions from all over the world, we have received compliments from many groups that follow us; we have received an increase of people that follow the Association Pietas, we have obtained a growth of our local communities in Sicily, which are continuing to develop and will soon have more temples, one for each city where these communities are present.
So, in view of the birth and erection of temples, of the return of the ancient cult, of the increase of followers of the Roman tradition, of the increase in the number of members of the Pietas association, of the establishment of ever closer foreign groups that deal with the Gentile tradition, considering all of this, we decided to bring to fruition all that was already a past project, namely, the foundation of a legal entity, institutionally valid, to be able to relate our community with the institutions. And so the Religious Body “Pietas Gentile Community” was founded.
Today, finally, the gentile community is gathered around a flag, is gathered around an ideal and is very cohesive and very united. Generally it happens that between the decision of a board of directors and a large assembly of members one encounters some resistance. Ours was an exceptional case, the Pontifex was appointed both by the “board of directors” of the entity itself, and by the community, which expressed its will through those members who were present in the telematic meeting of the community. So the community founded is very solid, cohesive, it was born with unanimously recognized points of reference. This is our strength, the union, the friendship, the sincerity that binds us in our human relationships. Elements that generate the envy of many, but in short, envy is an ugly beast and whoever cultivates it does nothing but destroy himself.
For us, on the other hand, this has been a year of well-deserved successes, a year in which I myself have felt profound admiration for the involvment shown by every member of the community and so I am delighted to find myself representing this truly large group of people. To date we have reached 320 members, over 5700 people who follow us constantly on our online channels (on the web, on facebook and elsewhere), so the community is walking well, I am extremely proud, I am proud of all of you, I am satisfied with the great work the Pietas Association is doing and carrying on.