«Collegamento CH. A family around the world. Connected». This is the announcement with which the worldwide conference call, or linkup, is launched on the web, one of the original characteristics of the Focolare under the aspect of communication. And this is how it is explained:

When: It was born in 1980. It was the 11th of August, the feast of St. Clare of Assisi. On that day, her name day, Chiara Lubich was in Switzerland together with a handful of people who were greeting her: it was a family celebration. A profound communion was created among them.

Who: In the days that followed, from Chiara’s house, a chain of telephone calls was initiated that kept alive the perceived reality of being one family. The news that arrived from the communities of the Focolare in the various countries of the world were communicated. Chiara proposed to this group of people, a spiritual thought so as to live together, with increasing intensity, the spirituality of unity.

How: In those days they discovered in Switzerland (CH) the existence of a service called “collective telephone conference call” and so they made us of it immediately. Such a linkup, in the weeks that followed, was extended to other nations, up to the point of reaching all the Countries where the Focolare is present.

Why: In time and with the swift evolution of telecommunications, it has passed from the conference call to streaming and to satellite transmission, because, Chiara affirmed, “an Opera, which has unity as its ideal”, a family “now spread all over the planet” must share “among all, using the fastest and most adequate means”, “joys, sufferings, hopes, projects”, to experience “the love that goes and comes back”, to make the journey together, “the holy journey” of life.

For a united world: The strong and joyful experience of “unity and of universality” is made that links hundreds of thousands of people, spread in all the five continents, directed towards universal brotherhood.