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Oct 29, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
The families came from around the world for their appointment with Pope Francis on October 26- 27, 2013, for an event that was part of the Year of Faith. The title of the meeting had been promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Family: Family, experience the joy of faith. It was a festive St. Peter’s Square that welcomed 100,000 people from 75 countries. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandchildren, countless children . . . all listening to pope Francis, amidst the applause, song and hundreds of colourful flying balloons. Families from several parts of the globe shared their stories. Among them: a family belonging to the Focolare Movement’s New Families, a movement that collaborated with many others in bringing about the event. Three European couples expressed their intention to marry “despite everything;” a married couple with their son in their arms, announced the arrival of a second child; a family shared its courageous choice to join the missions; another well-known family on the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy assisted in saving several Eritrean refugees; then, one Nigerian shipwreck survivor on the same island; another family was forced to flee because of the war. . . “Life is often tiring, many times it is tragic. . . ,” commented the Pope after hearing them speak. But what is really burdensome is the lack of love.” The pope invited families not to believe in the ‘throw-away’ culture,’ that chops life into pieces. “Christian spouses are not naïve,” he pointed out, “they know the problems and the dangers of life. But they are not afraid to assume their responsibility.” There are three key words that should never be missing in a family, said Pope Francis: please, so as not to be intrusive; thank you so as to communicate love; and sorry so as to be able to forgive and begin again each day (see full text). Nineteen songs composed by young people who took part in the Family Talent Contest and 4,200 drawings by children in the Present Your Family to the Pope project. A gesture of support for the families of Syria also went out from St. Peter’s Square with the collaboration of Caritas Italy and Caritas Syria. Holy Mass was celebrated on Sunday, October 27, 2013 amidst an atmosphere of deep recollection and prayer. The Pope invited all to rediscover the dimension of simplicity of joy in prayer. “Pray in the family, for one another,” he said. Regarding faith: “Let’s not keep it of ourselves as if it were our bank account,” but share it through our witness and openness to others, urging us to go out to the peripheries (complete text of Pope Francis’ homily) The event had been preceeded by the 21st Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family (October 23-25, 2013). “The family is founded on the indissoluble matrimonial unity between a man and a woman, and it is open to life, it is the engine of the history and of the world,” the Pope affirmed, but “but we should want to be near to couples in crisis and near to those who are separated.” This is the reason and goal for the 2014-2015 Synod on the Family, “not to redefine the theology of matrimony and the family,” specified Bishop Paglia, “but to welcome and listen to families, living in various and complex situations.” For more: www.familia.va
Video on CTV Romereports http://youtu.be/AIo6T_uCNg0
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Oct 26, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
“Rather than sharing my personal story – Stefano Isolan, a young Italian shares – I would like to talk about the community that raised me.
In 1986 my parents, farmers for generations, moved to Loppiano putting themselves at the service of the little city of the Focolare Movement. I was only three years old. We found ourselves immersed in a very welcoming reality, both on the part of the focolarini as well as the neighbours who introduced us to the Tuscany farming culture. Thanks to them my love for this earth grew throughout the years up to the point of pushing me towards embarking on the study of agriculture.
Working in the Loppiano Farm was a big gift: an enterprise that puts love and respect for the earth at its center, the cooperation among the workers and shareholders, with the aim of generating good and healthy products.
In Loppiano I saw people from all over the world come and go. It became natural for me to have friends of different cultures and religions. I experienced firsthand that, by giving space to the love that God has placed in the heart of every person, a united world is possible.
In the meantime, I had developed many friendships at Incisa (the nearby town) and in Florence, I started dating a young girl and I participated in the life of the parish. Together with the parish priest we experienced the authentic and fruitful love of the Gospel. A love that shows us the road that God has thought of, for our full realization. From this group in fact, beautiful families were formed, three vocations to the religious life, and one to the priesthood: tangible fruits of the Love of God among us. I felt myself to be a part of a community that has given me so much and for which I felt the need of giving something in return. I committed myself to associationism, in particular in the Workshop for Peace.
In the Spring of 2004, I was invited to run as a candidate for the Town Council of Incisa. After days of reflection and consultation with the young people of the Focolare with whom I shared everything and also with my friends in Incisa, I answered positively to that which seemed to me a way of giving back the good things that I have received. They were five years lived in close contact with the people. In the midst of sacrifices, successes and some failures, we worked – each one according to his or her own beliefs – to make our Town more livable for each and every person. A concrete example was that of the segregated rubbish collection. With the committment of the council and the all the citizens we became one of the most virtuous towns in Tuscany. I cannot also forget the big aim of uniting the town councils of Incisa and Figline, the result of years of collaboration and consultation with the citizens.
Bolivia 2012: Stefano with his sisters
And thus, my natural family, the Focolare Movement, the parish, the community of Incisa, the nature itself which surrounded me, started to become always more, one reality. I wanted to put myself at the full-time service of this big family. But I didn’t know how. Gradually an idea started to form within me: answer to the love I have received with Love. I felt the call of God to the priesthood which, for me, meant directing my life to His service, and as a consequence to the service of my brothers and of the whole humanity. Certainly it was not easy to leave all my activities. And it was even more difficult to leave my people and my land to enter the Seminary. But God himself made me experience the words of Jesus: “Whoever leaves father. mother, fields, for my name with receive a hundred times more …” (Mt 19,20). And it was really like this. Even if I entered the Seminary in 2007, I was able to conclude my term as Town Councilor up to the end of the legislature in 2009, and in 2014 I will be ordained a priest.
I would like to bear witness that it is worth it to live of one another, to work to make our world more beautiful, it is worth it to love, there where each one of us is called to do so. And I cannot but thank God for this cannot every morning and every evening!”.
(Experience shared by Stefano Isolan on September 15, 2013)
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Oct 24, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
Hearing of a jail for “special cases,” young people from the Focolare Movement decided to investigate. At the jail they found men, women and children, mostly Christians from Eritrea. Their story was one of incredible pain. In an attempt to escape the difficult situation in their own land and believing they were being brought to a better place, they discovered instead that they had fallen into the trap of human organ trafficking and would soon be among the anonymous dead. When they realized this, they fled over the border and took refuge in Egypt. Without documents they were arrested and jailed. This is where the Focolare’s young people met them waiting for a way back to Eritrea. Abdo who is a firsthand witness, recounts: “With the help of a missionary and the young people from the Focolare Movement we were able to go into the jail. We were enthusiastic about offering help, but we never imagined the suffering we would touch with our own hands. There was a scarcity of food and hygiene; and medical care was nonexistent inside the jail that had once been an army barracks. The young people were shocked to see children there, even small children. One child had been hit by a stray bullet as he was making his way across the border. “It’s impossible to express the deep pain we felt in the face of such great suffering,” Abdo continues. “With our eyes filled with tears, we asked what evil thing these people had done that merited them to be in such a situation.” But the young people didn’t lose heart. They split into groups, listened to people’s stories, tried to bring help and hope in God’s love. They provided material assistance for the most urgent needs. “Some needed medicine, others clothing or a telephone in order to contact their families and inform them where they had ended. But their first need was for someone to visit them, and show an interest in them.
Photo © 100viaggi.it
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Oct 22, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
To identify and follow the ways of the culture of unity in present day history, beside the men and women of our times. This is the vocation of the Sophia University Institute (IUS), which has inaugurated, at the auditorium of Loppiano (FI), the sixth academic year in the presence of Card. Giuseppe Betori, Grand Chancelor, Maria Voce, vice-Grand Chancelor of the SUI and President of the Focolare Movement, the Bishop of Fiesole Mons. Mario Meini, the Head Rabbi of the Jewish community of Florence and Siena Rav Yosef Levi, civil authorities and more than 600 people. Its aim echoes what Pope Francis affirmed recently in his speech to the Faculty of Theology of Sardinia in which he launched an invitation to make the universities a venue of discernment and of formation of wisdom, of a culture of proximity and of nearness, of formation to solidarity.
Maria Voce opened the proceedings in the morning recalling the goals that have been reached this year: the official approval of the Statutes on the part of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the attainment of numerous masteral degrees and of the first doctorate on research in “Principles and perspectives of a culture of unity”, the many registrations for the first year of the course (45 new students from more than 25 Countries). “Sophia is always more characterized, explained Maria Voce, as a priviledged venue wherein the questions and the challenges that our times call out to us on a planetary scale are gathered, and to which we cannot but give a unanimous answer: an answer, authentic and convincing, that can come only from the real and daily sharing of thoughts and of life.
Then Annamaria Fejes, Hungarian, followed, who on behalf of about one hundred students that are attending the different courses, expressed the common motivations that many of them shared in choosing this academic center: “To find, through reflection and dialogue, alternative ways to the wars and conflicts that stain our planet with blood. We have the wish and the desire to meet young people, adults, associations, organizations, so as to build with them a more fraternal world”.
Archbishop Betori also reaffirmed the role that the Sophia University Institute has as an existential space of encounter, of the incarnation of divine wisdom and human knowledge: “The personal committment to live proximity and reciprocity in the various moments throughout the day, in many cultural activities, makes Sophia the place in which divine ‘sophia’ and human search for knowledge become only one thing”.
The Dean, Mons. Piero Coda, outlined the challenges, opportunities for collaboration and the prospects of this cultural journey: after the first years of intense experimentation, he explained, “now is the time to focus on the formative project that animates the mission of Sophia, in the integrality of a proposal that seeks to harmoniously match life and study”. There are 23 protocols of understanding with University Institutions in Italy, Europe and in the world aside from the numerous courses held and animated by Sophia in different Countries. He further underlined the contribution of the students, “co-builders” of the academic life: “With you we too feel that we are protagonists of the new world that is being born. With you, he reaffirmed, citing Chiara Lubich, it is possible to find new mental structures on a world-class level”.
The first lesson was entrusted this year to Prof. Benedetto Gui, professor of Political Economics, entitled “Relational complexity and economics. Can the first be useful to the second?”. A thorough and lively exposition of the role of relationships in economics, that are more than ever important today.
Stefania Tanesini
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Oct 21, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
Saturday, October 12, the “Chiara Lubich” childcare centre was inaugurated in Padua (Italy). It was a big celebration that involved the whole community of the district of Altichiero a few minutes away from the historic centre of Padua. More than three hundred people were present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony to get to know this new educative reality. “We would like to continue to form and to raise the younger generations,” Ivo Rossi, vice-mayor of Padua underlined, “Today there is a strong need to be present in every district of the city with the principals of communication and relations. We live in a moment of economic difficulty which we as administrators feel first hand, but in these difficulties lie our duty to continue to create the conditions that will make our children free.” A city that is united in remembering Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement and recipient of the UNESCO Prize for Education to Peace and Human Rights. “Honest, credible and authentic young people will be able to change the world,” explained Claudio Piron, councillor in charge of scholastic and youth policies at Padua’s local council, and supporter of the initiative.
Among the guests there was also Omar Ettahiri, secretary of the Moroccan association of the city of Padua who placed at the centre of his speech the charism of Chiara Lubich as a teacher of interreligious dialogue and a woman of peace who “is surely smiling in heaven”, he affirmed. It was an occasion also to remember the educative and scholastic background of the founder of the Focolare who in the beginning of the forties, just as she turned twenty, taught in the elementary schools of the province of Trent with a teaching method that was “capable of understanding, embracing and motivating her students”. “Chiara’s life,” 
underlined Professor Milan, professor of pedagogy at the University of Padua,” (…) has truly set the example”. At the conclusion of the ceremony the same Councillor Piron, quoting the words of the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, reaffirmed the importance and the value of the project for the whole community because “to found libraries and nurseries is like building once again public granaries in order to accumulate reserves against the winter of the spirit”.
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Oct 20, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
35 organizations coming from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Messico, Paraguay and Uruguay will be represented in this meeting, which will be held from 21 to 24 October 2013 in the small town “Ginetta” in São Paulo, Brazil.
It is the first Latin American meeting for leaders of social organizations inspired by the charism of unity of Chiara Lubich. The theme will be “Fraternity in action: the foundation of social cohesion in the XXI century”.
Gilvan David de Sousa, one of the promoters of this initiative, said: “Our aim is to identify the main elements of the charism of unity that contribute towards a social change so as to be able to offer answers to the important questions posed by our continent” .
At a time when the current global crisis demands the research for new ways leading to an integral human development, for Sousa “this meeting should be a new stage in the process started to create a network among the different organizations, whose aim is to promote mutual enrichment through the exchange of ideas, experiences, difficulties and to produce a greater social impact”.
An opportunity to go deeper into the theme of fraternity will be offered through the sharing of experiences and reports, group work and the topics of the four plenary sessions, namely “The social question in the light of the Social Doctrine of the Church”; “The Charism of Unity and social issues in Latin America and the Caribbean”; “ The charism of unity and its implementation in organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean” and “How social projects inspired by the charism of unity can proceed together in the Latin American continent”.
Fr. Vilson Groh, Vera Araújo and Susana Nuin will be among the main speakers. Fr. Vilson Groh ( known in Brazil because he has received the Parliamentary Award Darcy Ribeiro 2013), has been working for 30 years in the outskirts of Florianópolis , Brazil for persons deprived of their rights; the sociologist Vera Araújo is a member of the Focolare Movement entrusted with the responsibility at international level of Dialogue with Culture; Susana Nuin is the executive secretary of the Department of Communication of CELAM and Consultant to the Pontifical Council for social communication.
