Rome, Italy - After a couple of months of preparation, especially by a group of Ambassadors for Peace from Rome coordinated by Antonio Imeneo and the supervision of Giuseppe Calì, we held a Cake for Peace competition on December 11 in the auditorium of the Institute for Tourism of Velletri, Rome. Competitors came from high-level schools of tourism and cooking in different parts of Italy, with selected students and their directors participating. The jury included expert chefs, members of the Italian Food and Wine Institute, and diplomats from 15 embassies. They evaluated the taste, how the theme connected to peace, and the artistic presentation of the cakes.
All cakes featured a very beautiful artistic composition portraying some aspect of peace. There were cakes calling for peace between Israel and Palestine, between men and women, between north and south, and so on. Some of those cakes were truly works of art. It was a joy for the ambassadors to judge the cakes, and they invested all their heart in evaluating carefully the students' efforts. Especially moving was the cake submitted by about 70 handicapped children from a local school; they offered samples of their cake to everyone and received a prize as well.
The award ceremony was held in the main auditorium in front of about 300 people, with the delegations from the schools filling a third of the hall. The ambassadors of Albania, Austria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, El Salvador, Honduras, Iraq, Jordan, Moldova, Serbia, and Zimbabwe were present, along with the Bishop of Velletri, the president of NATO, the President of the Italian Catholic Priests Association, several Catholic representatives, businessmen, politicians, and representatives of national and local institutions. The Ambassador of Iraq, as head of the jury, gave a speech about peace and then presented the awards to the three winners.
Especially meaningful was the ceremony of peace in which the Ambassador of Iraq and the head of the Italian Catholic Priests embraced each other, calling for peace between Catholics and Muslims. Twenty new Ambassadors for Peace were appointed.
The sponsors of the event were the Ministry of Education and the Italian Food Association with major contributions by UPF. Giuseppe Cali, Secretary General of UPF-Italy, described the purposes and activities of UPF and distributed copies of UPF-Italy's Italian-language magazine Voci di Pace (Voices for Peace). Several journalists covered the event.