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18 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide
It begins with a metaphor of the pelican, this talk of Ezio Aceti – psychologist of the evolutionary age – on Chiara Lubich as an educator, during the dedication of the kidergarten Spine Rossine to the foundress of the Focolare Movement, last 29th of January in Putignano, in the province of Bari (Italy).
The decision to name this school after Chiara, was born from the desire to have its pedogogy be inspired by the value of fraternity, that is expressed in the teaching methodology by the ability to transmit dsciplinary knowledge to the littlest ones. Chiara Lubich was a great example of this, breaking down and making it easy for everyone, especially to the “littlest ones”, to understand the values of the Gospel.
“The witnesses – Aceti affirms – are great teachers because their coherence attracts and it is for this reason that they have become sources of inspiration to the young and the old who have followed them. Chiara Lubich and Mother Teresa of Calcutta represent limpid examples of this; they attracted because of the charism they radiated, over and beyond their speeches and their words, and their presence represented for many, a reason for a great emotion and deep feelings. It is important to know that charisms are for the present and that they don’t pass away even if the founders of the Movements are no longer with us. Chiara – Aceti continues – focused on the experience of God, creating a new experience based on unity. To understand the basics of education – according to the psychologist – we must eliminate some prejudices”.
Aceti recalled great personalities, like Chiara Lubich, who knew how to live a new educative style. Simon Weil, a French philosopher, for example, indicated attention as a form of love for the neighbor who is speaking. Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher, exhorted to put oneself in the shoes of the other, to listen following the inspirations that come from this and finally to communicate them to the other. Maria Montessori, Italian pedagogist, elaborated a system of teaching in which she showed that if it is possible to teach something to a child bearing a handicap, then it is possible to teach it to all the children. The Polish educator, Janusz Korczak accompanied the children in his orphanage up to the moment of their death in the concentration camp of Trzeblinka. The last pedagogical element indicated by Aceti was the testament of Chiara Lubich: “Be a family… love one another until all may be one”.
During the inauguration, the greetings of Maria Voce president of the Focolare, arrived wherein she wished that the dedication to Chiara of the school would become a stimulus for whoever attends the school to follow her example.
Source: Città Nuova online.
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16 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide
The Focolare began to establish contact with Muslims in the 1960’s.
In Algeria a deep friendship was begun among Christians and Muslims in the 1970’s, which then spread in the city of Tlemcen. This gave rise to a Focolare community that was almost entirely made up of Muslims. This not only overcame barriers between Islam and Christianity, but also the cruelty of the civil war.
This friendship was the basis of eight international gatherings for “Muslim Friends of the Focolare” from 1992 to 2008. Now there are several thousand Muslims who are in contact with the Movement around the world.
At the end of the 1990’s in the United States a new page was turned in relations between Christians in Muslims. Chiara Lubich, a white Catholic woman was invited by charismatic American Muslim leader, Imam W. D. Mohammed, to share her message to the faithful gathered at the Malcolm X Mosque in Harlem, N. Y. At the conclusion of that day in May 1997, the Imam stated: “Today, here in Harlem, New York, a new page in history has been written.” The two leaders made a pact of brotherhood between them and their respective movements. Since then there have been regular encounters between Muslim and Christian communities who look toward universal brotherhood and have an impact on their local environments. More than forty mosques and local Focolare communities are involved in this experience in several U.S. cities.
T
he path of discovery between the spirituality of unity and Islam has had some notable moments: the meeting for Muslim friends held in 2008 in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, which was entitled “Love and Mercy in the Bible and in the Holy Koran”. The presentation by Muslim Professor Adnane Morkrani, entitled “Reading the Koran with the Eye of Mercy” was very much appreciated by the Imams and faitfhful who were present.
In 2010, 600 Christians and Muslims met in Loppiano, Italy. Many of them were presidents and Imams of Islamic communities in Italy. As Imam Layachi said, the meeting was both an arrival point and point of departure for many experiences begun and carried forward in several parts of Italy.
In Tlemcen, Algeria, which was one of the capital cities of Muslim culture for 2011, a meeting was held for Muslim members of the Focolare Movement with the title “Living Unity”. The eighty participants came from ten countries. The presence of Muslim professors also proved valuable because they were able to examine topics of spirituality from a Muslim perspective that were based on a real life experiences.
The presence of Muslims has grown in recent decades in Italy, because of immigrations. In many cities in the north and south of the peninsula a real and true friendship has begun between the faithful of Christian and Muslim communities. On November 25, 2012 in Brescia, Italy, some 1,300 Christians and Muslims joined together for a day entitled Common Paths for the Family, which was promoted by the Focolare Movement and several Islamic communities. In Catania, Italy, on April 23, 2013 there was the meeting celebration The Muslim Family, the Christian Family: challenges and hopes, in which 500 people gathered in the name of dialogue.
On March 20, 2014, there will be an event at the Urbania University of Rome, dedicated to Chiara Lubich and Religions: Together for the Unity of the Human Family. The gathering will highlight her efforts for interreligious dialogue, six years after her death. The event also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate. Leaders from the Muslim world are also expected to attend.
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13 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
«I know that I’m not able to live alone, but only with Jesus in our midst. I strive to be part of a living cell, to be linked with other people with whom I can talk about such a way of living. I’d like to reach someone by phone, at least once a day, with whom I can feel understood regarding my life, someone who understands me so deeply that it takes no more than five minutes to know how things are going. If this isn’t possible at times, then I live the spiritual communion which is still something very valuable. I strive to weave a concrete network of relationships and to be an active part of them.
The Bishop Hemmerle with Chiara Lubich
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12 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide
“Arriving at the Isola of La Scala (Italy), on the 29th of January, 2014 – the Gen Verde wrote – we discovered that START NOW was no longer just our project, but it also belonged to the 100 youth with whom we held artistic workshops and also to the many adults who accompanied us during those days, working behind the scenes. Everyone shouted out with one voice: START NOW, Wow! 
“When we started the workshops on dance, singing, percussion and theatre, it was as if we had known each other always: we were all ready to share our talents. A young girl expressed herself in this way: “On stage I feel like I’m another person, free to express myself, different”. One of her companions answered: “Look you can be like this everyday…” “Saturday February 1, the youth and the Gen Verde together now ready to go onstage, began the traditional “Winter Meeting – Celebration of life”, organized by the Pastoral Care of the Youth of Verona, which this year saw us all working together on the frontlines with the Diocese to bear witness that there is reason to hope. The Bishop, in his homily during the Mass and before the show, encouraged all the young people present saying: “With you the future is assured!”. “Art, once again, has become an instrument of dialogue, to take on a challenge. As we sang “… peace depends on you”, we made a commitment together, taking in also the 3,500 participants who, during the concert, sang along with us. A wave of fraternity has started from Verona and who knows where it will reach!” 
The Gen Verde international music group, is at present made up of 21 young women from 13 Countries. It has presented more than 1,400 shows during various tours in Europe, Asia, South and North America. The original style of this music group evolves together with the arrival of each new member. The various influences bring a specific and rich cultural and ethnic mix and a wide array of traditional and contemporary genres. Up to the present, the band has released a total of 70 albums. While the composition of the group has changed throughout the years, the values underlying its artistic objectives have remained the same: to contribute towards creating a global culture of peace, dialogue and unity. The Gen Verde international performing arts group, has its homebase in the International Little City of Loppiano (Florence, Italy) where people from all origins and races share the creative and enriching experience of building unity in the midst of diversity.
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11 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
The story of the Focolare Movement often begins with the following words: “It was wartime and everything was crumbling . . . only God remained.” That was in 1943 when the Second World War was in full swing. Many of the practices of those early days have become emblematic and are now part of the heritage of Focolare communities around the world.
One such practice was the “bundle”. Vittoria Aletta Salizzoni, one of Chiara Lubich’s first companions explains: “I remember one thing. I think it happened in 1946. Chiara proposed that we give away our extra clothing to the community. That’s how we began the practice of the “bundle” as it was called. We were poor. You can imagine! In the aftermath of the war there wasn’t anything. Our clothing was old and used, but we all managed to find something that could be added to the “bundle”. I remember that large pile of clothing in the middle of the room of the “little house”, ready for distribution.”
This practice that recalls the first Christian communities where: “there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need” (Acts 4:34-35), has become common practice among the Focolare communities across the world.
The inhabitants of the Focolare town of Loppiano decided to launch a similar proposal on February 8-9, 2014 for their entire territory. This would also be in response to Pope Francis’ upcoming Lenten Message in which he highlights sharing. The pope calls for a conversion: “that human conscience may be converted to justice, equality, sobriety and sharing.”
The solidarity project has been entitled Weekend For Giving. “It will be a full immersion in the culture of giving,” organisers explain, “that offers a space for sharing and making requests for materials in good and usable condition, also the bulletin board for posting needs and the “time bank” where you can put your time at the disposal of others.
The town’s meeting hall has been chosen as the gathering point. “All kinds of things have arrived: from used clothing for all ages and sizes, books, appliances, furniture, toys, house décor items,” they say.
On Sunday space was also provided for discussing and explaining the culture of giving as opposed to a culture of possessing, and how it can be applied to everyday life.
At the conclusion of the day, the Permanent Bundle Network was inaugurated as the collection and distribution point for all the donated materials. It will be a place open to solidarity and redistribution of goods to those who are in need of them.
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10 Feb 2014 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
We are not going to Africa to get to know the place, to be tourists, but to encounter a people”, Flavia and Valter wrote.
She is Swiss, she studied International Relations in Geneve and had worked for a few months at Bukas Palad Tagaytay, in the Philippines. Valter is a Brazilian journalist who just finished his Masters Degree in 2012 at the Sophia University Institute in Loppiano, Italy. In 2005 he went as a volunteer to Indonesia, six months after the tsunami that ravaged Southeast Asia.
Inspite of living on opposite ends of the Atlantic Ocean, they met in 2004 and were married eight years later.
Now they are leaving their security, projects, jobs... They will be going to spend a few months together with the community of the Focolare in Man, in sub-Saharan Africa, 600 km. west of the capital of the Ivory Coast, Abidjan. “To leave everything behind is not easy – they wrote – but we feel that this experience of total detachment makes us more free to live every moment in profundity, without looking back”.
In Man they will work in the Little City of the Movement, in a center for computer science and in a center that works towards waging a war against malnutrition in hundreds of children.
“The fact that we are going there as a couple is an aspect that we would like to underline – Flavia wrote. Many people say that marriage imprisons you, forcing you to live a life based on the search for material security. We want to take up the challenge and show that it is possible together to open ourselves to the others”.
“Meeting the African people has always been our dream – Valter added – but the many relationships that we have built has transformed our trip into an adventure that we would like to share with many of our friends. For them and for all the people who are interested to know more about the African continent, we had the idea to write a book of our experiences together with the photos to document them”.
“We would like everyone to participate in our adventure– concluded Flavia – and to offer the fruits of our experience: we believe that the family is not only made by the bond of blood, but it contains all the relationships that are built together with the communities wherein we find ourselves”.
For those who would like to participate in this project they can make a donation and they will receive a “photo book” with their experience.
For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/juntosrumoaafrica.
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