On 8 May 2021 at a traffic light in the city of Porto Alegre (Brazil), Lorenzo, aged 24, and his mother, Themis, saw a poor man with a sign: “I’m hungry, help me”. This is how the project “Troque-a-fome-por-flor” (Swap hunger for a flower) began. The result is a network of florists and volunteers that now employs more than 70 people and is also spreading to other cities in Brazil. https://vimeo.com/619912229
Address others with gentleness
A gathering, a celebration and a commitment: this is how the 35th anniversary of the Economy of Communion was lived. We celebrated the journey we have undertaken to renew together our commitment to continuing to build a more humanitarian and regenerative economy.
The first presentation of Chiara Lubich’s book ‘Paradise ’49’ took place on the 22nd of May 2026 in the Paul VI Hall at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. The book is a collection of writings in which the Foundress of the Focolare Movement bears witness to and shares her mystical experience from the years 1949 to 1951.
It is the 16th of July 1949. Chiara Lubich is in Tonadico, in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, for a period of rest together with some of her first companions. They are joined there by the Honourable Igino Giordani, whom Chiara called Foco. On that day, Chiara and Foco sealed a Pact of unity, a prelude to the spiritual and mystical experience that Chiara would live between 1949 and 1951. This period is known as “Paradise ’49”, the writings from which have recently been published in a book (for now in Italian). In the introduction to the book, the theologian Piero Coda offers some insights “For a theological reading” of the text. Here is an extract, relating specifically to the Pact of the 16th of July, together with a short video of Chiara Lubich from 20 December 1999, in which she shares this experience of light with the Gen, the young people of the Focolare Movement.
0 Comments