Aug 1, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
By the end of 2012 I had an awful experience. I was in a friend’s house with all his family and suddenly three armed and violent men entered their house to rob. They beat us and put us all lying down in the ground of his parents’ room. Then, they started interrogating us and shouting us “where is the money?” with guns in our heads… The father of my friend started saying to one of the thieves that he forgave him, but that was not the way he was supposed to act. The man was getting angry and we were afraid he would do something awful to my friend’s father. Surprisingly, the thief started crying and saying sorry. At that point, all the other thieves were gone with the family car, but this man, who seemed to be their boss, was still there with us. Amazingly he asked my friend’s father if there was something important, so that he would make sure we would get it back. My friend’s father told him that it was ok to take everything with him, but asked him the favour to return the car since he needed it for work. The thief promised to give it back, asked forgiveness to each one of us and left. The car, half an hour later, was found intact by the police. In order to build peace, I needed to forgive, and even if the thief asked for forgiveness, I didn’t quite feel like I could do it, my part was not completed. The fact of having felt powerless in front of a person that could take my life away or the life of people I love, just by a single movement of a finger, made me incapable of forgiving. And also, in front of the eyes of my other friends, they would say I had the right to hate, the right to be angry. I needed time, but I also needed to do something concrete to make sure I’d do my part to understand the root of so much violence, why would a person do something like that to another. So I decided, with other friends that are Youth for a United World (Y4UW), to start going to a shelter of men that have nothing. We wanted to at least start breaking the prejudices, sharing the pain and the difficulties of those who live in the peripheries. We are not politicians and we can’t do huge changes, but like one of my friends, Carolina, said: “I think that these small acts can help change the world, or at least, the reality next to me. Maybe at first sight it’s not visible, but you see the measure of your acts when the other makes you see it”. The moments shared with the men at the shelter helped me know about the “reasons” of that thief’s desperation. Thanks to having met these men of the street, that have, some of them, in fact robbed sometime, I knew they did it because they thought it was their last resource. I don’t know what I would do if people act like I don’t exist, if people don’t even answer me, if no one looks at me directly into my eyes and I have literally nothing and no one even cares… so then I felt that I had to forgive… and then I felt strongly that I was putting a brick on the construction of peace in my country. It’s simple, every Saturday we play games or play the guitar or we watch a football match (the World Cup was awesome) or even we play football together, then we have dinner and we get to know each other more, specially their stories, some of which are actually incredible, they are people that just need the strength to forgive others and themselves, but more than anything, they need to restart their lives. A group of specialists helps them progress, but us Y4UW have another role, as one of my mates, Francisco, tells “we grow next to them and we never stop making them feel our care, which is always mutual”. On December of 2013 the police in my city decided to do a strike and people went crazy and started looping businesses and shops and even the storage of a big charity organization was emptied. Lots of people were violently robbed and people started defending themselves with the help of their neighbors and it was like a small day of war between our people. The next day, after a terrible night of chaos, with other Y4UW we decided spontaneously to go clean the city, especially downtown where there were more ashes and dirt and to gather food for the charity organization. We said it all over the social networks and the media: at the beginning there were 15 of us, and then we ended up being more than 100 (and the people who brought food were even more). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WX_TbWHvVw&feature=youtu.be We realized that the TV news, that night, had at least one good news to talk about thanks to our initiative (because the media came to cover our actions) and a lot of people saw it. But that was not the only “good news”, because thanks to the food we gathered, the kids of a small kindergarten in a very poor neighborhood could eat. The kindergarten’s name is “The Light corner”. From that, a group of Y4UW didn’t want to finish there. As we continued to go to the men shelter, others decided to do something more for the kindergarten, so they started a project. First thing they did was to celebrate Christmas with them, playing with them, doing a live nativity scene and taking presents for the kids. Then they started thinking how to improve the facilities of this very small and poor place. In the meanwhile, they suffered a robbery of some construction materials and then all of us Y4UW, with the help of friends from University and work and families, we cooked and sold sweet cakes to make money to buy back the materials. Then with everyone’s help we gathered educational material, games and curtains for the windows, to also make more beautiful the space for the kids. One of the nicest things they live is what Caro, the Y4UW that leads the project says: “the relationship between us and the kids, their mothers, the teachers and the neighborhood has grown so much that we have become a family, where we share also our personal needs. One of the teachers, for example, is pregnant and she asked me for help because she couldn’t pay for a baby stroller. After sharing this necessity with a friend of mine from work, she decided to give the teacher the one she had at home, it was in great conditions and the nicest thing was that she decided to go and give it personally to her”. They have organized a dental hygiene workshop, an orchard workshop and also they did another Christmas celebration last year with new toys, donated by a Chapel of a city very near from ours. The next projects are to build bathrooms and to remake the electric wiring. Like my friend Caro said: “love is thirsty of love, love spreads in our hearts… and love “makes us cry with the neighbor” (like Pope Francis said in the Philippines). ‘The Light Corner’ gave me the chance to dream bigger and to believe we have all the hands that we need next to us, in our surroundings: family, work, university and friends, to make things go ahead. We just need to make the first step”. Source: United World Project
Jul 30, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
“We received the news that Pope Francis will visit our country from September 19th to 22nd with great joy. The Holy Father wants to show us his affinity in a time in which, thanks in part to his mediation, we breathe the air of hope in our national life before the new possibility of dialogue in progress between the United States and Cuba. What he is doing as universal Pastor of the Church is very, very important in the search for reconciliation and peace among all peoples of the earth!” So write the Catholic bishops of Cuba in a message to all Cubans. While the Caribbean island prepares to receive the first pope from Latin America, we spoke in Avana with José Andrés Sardina Pereira, a Spanish architect with a specialization in sacred art and liturgy, who is also a Cuban culture enthusiast. “The project we are bringing ahead,” explains Sardina Pereira, “aims to be a contribution of the archbishopric of Santiago to the work started by civil institutions; that is, to seek to have the historic center of Santiago (with the complex of its colonial churches and parts of the surrounding area) included in the UNESCO world heritage list, as are already the historic centers of Avana, Trinidad, Camagüey, and Cienfuegos.” Having a Cuban father, Sardina Pereira in addition to being an architect is a Cuban history enthusiast. This nation, also known as the “Big Island,” was also, “one of the last Spanish colonies to obtain independence (1898), therefore the process of ‘transculturation’ has been the most prolonged. Studies on the origin of Cuban culture, as opposed to that of Spain, place its solidification in the course of the 18th century, a time in which social, economic and cultural apprehensions, with a certain antagonism in respect to Spanish models and interests, were reawakened, all of which distinguish the island natives (the Creoles) from those arriving from the other side of the Atlantic.” Sardina Pereira clarifies that, “in the ethnic and cultural processes that give origin to the ‘cubanía’ (the essence of being Cuban), the Spanish and the Africans who arrived on the island brought with them cultures that were much more complex than those that are traditionally associated with ‘Spanish’ and ‘African’ concepts.” “Men and women from different linguistic, social, and religious groups, with different levels of economic development, coming from countries known today as: Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria, Congo, and Angola, arrived in Cuba.” Also people from other European countries, from Asia, and from the American continent itself. “Just think of the presence of the French in Cienfuegos or of the coffee fields on the east of the Island.” It is in this coexistence of a “rich and multi-coloured range of individuals from different geographical locations that the Cuban culture is born, one of the last cultures generated by humanity: audacious, integral, creative, and at the same time open, welcoming and respectful of diversity.” Sardina Pereira stresses how the Gospel message has been key to this genesis, as “this new country was founded thanks to the coexistence of individuals who were very different from each other: whites, coloured, and of mixed race, slaves and free people; many of them united by the love that Jesus came to teach us, a love that goes so far as to lay down one’s life. Just think of the heroism, the consistency, and the love of many fathers of the Cuban nation and of the many men and women who, following their example, generated it with their own lives.” People united by their faith who “travel together on a new ship in the tempestuous sea of history.” At this point in the conversation, our expert adds another element which he holds to be essential. Cubans are: “A people blessed by an extraordinary encounter with the mother of Jesus.” Such an affirmation alludes to that which tradition remembers as “the finding.” It is said that in the year 1612, three salt seekers (one of mixed race, one black and one white, three ethnicities who were up until that moment in conflict) found a small wooden board that was floating on the sea and upon which was the image of the Madonna with the inscription: “I am the Madonna of Charity.” “And this encounter with a Mother,” continued the architect with conviction, “is one of the elements which permits the Cuban people to discover true fraternity, which will be converted into an identifying symbol of this nationality. Mother of all, of sailors of every land, colour and creed.” Sardina Pereira likes to compare this hybridization to a typical dish of the center of the Island, made with a variety of ingredients called “ajiaco.” “In a globalized and ever-more interdependent world,” continues the architect, “many times intolerance of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity continues to be the primordial cause of grave conflicts. Chiara Lubich, a great personality of the Catholic Church, in her discourse to the United Nations in 1997, affirms that to build a world more united and in peace today, it is necessary to love the homeland of the other as one’s own, and the culture of the other as one’s own.” Sardina Pereira concludes with a personal confession: “Fulfiling this work I realised how much the knowledge and the diffusion of the Cuban culture can be a contribution to peace in the world, as long as we are able to redeem its historical memory and its deep Christian roots and keep them genuine.” By Gustavo Clariá
Jul 29, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
In Nigeria, there is great inequality in the development between cities and rural villages where there are almost no infrastructures and no electricity, medical care, roads, etc. Yakoko is one of these villages located closest to the desert, amid mountains – where the Christian and Muslim communities have always lived in great harmony. In the evening after working the fields, the men gather in the square to discuss while sipping an alcoholic drink produced from their Guinea corn. Some years back, a missionary, Sr. Suor Patricia Finba, had brought to Yakoko the spirituality of the Focolare and Felix, Abubacar, Nicodemus, Loreto, Father Giorge Jogo and others had made it their way of life. Last year they welcomed to their village more than 200 people who had arrived from the various regions of Nigeria, to get to know the Focolare spirit better. This year a group of youth and adults of Onitsha decided to pass a few days there. After a journey of 24 hours – which was at times dangerous – in over-packed public vans, loaded with bags and packs, they were warmly welcomed by the community into their homes. «We participated in their lives – Luce recounted – sharing all with them», «and – Cike added – we noticed that the youth were interested not so much in material goods, the clothes and medicine we had brought, but the spiritual ones, our friendship and our life-treasure: the discovery of God who is Love. » And so they decided to stay with us for a day of meditation, going on an excursion in the mountains which with its arid beauty, is an invitation to meditate. «It was an important event – Imma recounted. In an atmosphere of deep friendship we shared the values we believe in and on which we have based our lives.» And then in the following days, together we brought the material help to those in need, especially the elderly and the children and the many refugees who had come from the northern regions. We visited five villages. A Muslim community welcomed them with particular joy. Some of them had already started to live for unity in the world and with them we immediately felt a family atmosphere in which we shared joys and sufferings in that area. The villages, in fact, were undergoing a really difficult time due to the drought, and by tradition they had asked an important person of the village to pray for rain. But the rain did not come, and they had thus decided to kill this person. «On hearing this decision we were shocked and also started to pray to God to send rain – Luce continued – and in fact, on the third day, He blessed us with a great rainfall! But apart from the rain, we were so happy to have saved a person’s life.»
Jul 28, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
For several years the ROM camp has needed to be removed because of serious health and environmental issues, but it was no easy task given the fact that it was home to thirty families. Mario Bruno, Mayor of Alghero, decided to involve the families themselves in choosing a new location for the camp. There are many unemployed people in Alghero and there are also many people on the list for a house. So, as the Mayor says, it can be difficult to make people understand “that there are specific funds, and sometimes we all have to take to heart social inclusion and sometimes take decisions that are unpopular that are sometimes not understood.” “The 30 ROM minors are just as important to me as each and every Algherese. And I have to try to show with facts that this is possible,” the Mayor went on, “and I have to help the Algheresi to take this step knowing full well that I hold all the problems in my heart and not only those of one side.” Concretely, finding solutions for the Algheresi is one way of showing this value for people. He did it by announcing a 3 million and six hundred thousand euro financing toward the construction of 28 dwellings for Algeresi citizens. BrAs a politician, at times Bruno finds himself in difficult situations which he says he tries to face “with common sense, delving into adminstrative decisions without skipping over them, because we are here to defend everyone’s good and not only our own, we are only administrators.” The Mayor felt the “need of coming to a solution in front of the complexity of the moment we are going through (. . .) in which you can be part of the answer and I believe that this answer can be given individually but also collectively, and giving a collective answer means living for a good that goes beyond us.” Watch the Video – original soundtrack in Italian https://vimeo.com/133758828
Jul 25, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
“Jean Paul is in his last year at the Faculty of Engineering and has known the spirituality of unity for several years. Burundi is going through a difficult political situation, because of the upcoming election. The political impasse has provoked many controversies that give rise to clashes and protests. Some people have lost their lives. It was in this context of great instability and suffering that Jean Paul and a friend, returning home on foot because there was no public transport, found themselves in front of a new and unexpected countenance of Jesus forsaken.” The one reporting is Marcellus, along with the entire Focolare community of Burundi and Rwanda. “It was the summer of May 2cnd when the two young men were assaulted by a group of wrongdoers. Jean Paul and his friend were brutally beaten to the point of unconsciousness. Helped by several police officers who found them thrown into a manhole, they were rushed to hospital. The friend had light injuries but Jean Paul was in serious condition: a fractured backbone and paralysis of the lower limbs. In spite of his serious state Jean Paul was always smiling and hoping to for a recovery. He entrusted himself to God and Chiara Lubich. “The fact that I’m still alive is already a miracle of hers,” he said. In a short time news of what had happened to Jean Paul reached the community which, besides praying for him, began to look for the money to hire an ambulance that would return him to Rwanda, where he would receive adequate care. On May 12th he left for Kigali, Rwanda, accompanied by a nurse and Séverin, a young man from his Gen group. The chain of love and prayer widened, involving the Rwandan and worldwide Focolare family, especially the Gen. Jean Paul and Séverin gave a strong witness of mutual love in Kigali, Rwanda. In hospital the people were astonished that the visits to this boy were more numerous than to all the other patients. They were also amazed that by the fact that Jean Paul and Séverin were not brothers, from the same village or ethnicity. The boys explained to everyone that the engine behind their action was something else: the spirituality of unity based on the mutual love that Jesus asks of us. After a few medical examinations, Jean Paul was operated on the back and chest, on June 10th in Roi Fayçal Hospital. The prices at the hospital were very high, but God intervened with Providence that was never lacking. Jean Paul, who never grew discourage, considers this experience a true miracle. The surgery went well and this was encouraging to everyone. Jean Paul was transferred to another facility where he began physical therapy, and close monitoring by his physician and the team that performed the surgery. His condition is showing incredible improvement. He is beginning to feel hungry, physiological needs, pain and sensitivity in his feet. He is able to get out of bed and move around the hospital in a wheel chair. He continues to say that if it weren’t for this extended family he wouldn’t be alive. Jean Paul is very grateful to the Focolare community in Rwanda, to the Gen around the world, to the international Gen Centres, and to all those who have sent financial support and prayers. All our hearts overflow with gratitude to God for having given us the possibility of having this powerful experience that has aroused attention, communion, authentic love among His children and a powerful witness of the love that conquers all.”
Jul 23, 2015 | Focolare Worldwide
At the base of the itinerary of the Political Movement for Unity in Spain, is the desire to give an answer to a situation of violence being staged in the Basque Province by the armed struggle of the ETA. The objective is to try to heal the still open wounds and make an effort to ensure a future of peace. «It is a utopia, but it may be the only solution for our people.» There was a pressing surge of hope in some members of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa when about ten years ago, some exponents of the Political Movement for Unity (MppU) from Italy, spoke to them about fraternity as a political category. This perspective almost seemed like a shock because of the atmosphere existing in the Basque Countries and the work of the ETA.. With the objective of obtaining independence for the Basque people, the armed groups of ETA continuously sowed an atmosphere of violence and terror. In fact, the tension was at its highest. During those times – the first six months of 2005 – a group of politicians belonging not only to different parties but also to diverse ideologies, got together to pave the way to a strategy that sought the renewal of politics, based on mutual acceptance of peoples, without exclusions. Thus a new ground for discussion and acceptance of the other was set, involving politicians of all convictions, State employees, members of labour unions, citizens… all thirsting for a normalized coexistence, and true peace. The meetings were held every two months at different locations, alternating between the various parties. Among the participants, there were those who were 
immediately threatened for their pacific membership, and they arrived with their bodyguards. And there were those who feared they would not be well received by their own party or would be ousted. But they all tried to encourage one another, and overcoming every sense of mistrust, wished to testify that fraternity was possible, starting from themselves. As time passed, they saw the need to share this experience with politicians of other regions and communities. A group thus went to Madrid and participated in a series of encounters where they met other experiences, inviting everyone to unite Euskadi with the group of Gipuzkoa. It was a historic moment: four hours of dialogue (after lunching together) to get to know one another, and listening to and begging forgiveness from each other. Subsequently, they felt the need to draw up a document that each could bring to their own parties, to be studied as an alternative to the crisis. Many still felt the need to share the contents of the document and to hold seminars and round tables in other autonomous communities, also to present the experience of fraternity and pacific coexistence based precisely, on fraternity. When the ETA ceased its armed activities (2011) a new process began, though not simple, but which was a harbinger of hope. There are still many people, families, and groups that though sharing the same identity are divided and continue to clash, finding it really difficult to dialogue. The political workshop that had been created during those difficult times and simply called “workshop to learn about peace” – continues its journey toward pacification and search for peace, facing the diverse standpoints on historical facts and healing the wounds that are still open. They drew up a document named “Towards the path of reconciliation of the Basque society” (January 2013), that describes the basis to work on from then. This document is informally known as “The earth we trod on.” Every time dialogue seems to encounter a hitch, they try to start anew by helping one another believe that every man is a brother and that they could build something with all. This does not signify that the crimes should not be recognized as such, or that the great number of people who paid for this with their lives are not acknowledged. On the contrary, by accepting the past and recognizing the injustice and senselessness of the violence suffered, they try to view history like a slow and painful path toward reconciliation and peace, in which all can and must give their own contribution. On 13 March, precisely at the eve of the anniversary of Chiara Lubich during which all over the world her view of politics was being deepened, this group held a meeting at “Las Juntas Generales de Gipuzkoa” (provincial parliament) in San Sebastian, inviting various experts, scholars, and political figures. The debate was on “The relationship between common good and the common goods in globalization,” the basic manifesto of which, was sent beforehand to all and was greatly appreciated, and which described the deliberation to hold a “workshop to learn about peace.” In a climate of mutual acceptance, valid contributions emerged which were then integrated into the document itself, to be later diffused in order to promote the value of fraternity at all levels.
