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An interview with Maria Voce, Focolare President

 
Crux is an American based website linked to The Boston Globe, “covering all things Catholic”. It aims to “explore the personal faith and spirituality of Catholics and what it means to live a Catholic life.” Following the opening of the Cause of Beatification and Canonisation of Chiara Lubich on January 27 in the Cathedral of Frascati (Rome), their Vatican correspondent, Inés San Martín, had an extensive interview with Maria Voce, President of the Focolare, covering topics from Church unity to interreligious dialogue to the role of women in the church.

Maria_Voce_France-pBy Inés San Martín, Vatican correspondent for Crux,
February 13, 2015

ROME — A former lawyer and a fixture on the Rome scene since 2008, Maria Voce may well be the most powerful woman in the Catholic Church, in part because she’s not really that interested in what would traditionally be considered “women’s issues.”

Instead, the president of the worldwide Focolare movement is far more invested in matters such as Christian unity, a cause in which the focolarini, as members are known, have been engaged for decades.

She predicts that Pope Francis is destined to help bring the divided Christian family together, but not by waving a “magic wand.”

“Pope Francis will succeed if he finds Christians who welcome what he says, who are willing to lose the privileges they believe they’ve acquired,” she said in an interview with Crux in early February.

To put together a unified Church, she said, Christians must be “committed to mutual acceptance and listening,” as well as “willing to be testimonies of reciprocal love as the basis on which unity, which is a gift from God.”

Read the full interview on Crux