focolare.org – ‘A place of welcome for everyone’
In the first four months of this year focolare.org had 477,687 hits, with 1,422,450 pages visited for an average of 1.54 minutes per page. The typical visitor to focolare.org was between 35 and 54 years of age and tended to visit it on week days, especially Mondays, and do so from the workplace. Younger people, however, were reached by means of social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Google+), with a weekly average of more than 30,000 persons.
This is what is shown by the data collected by three students from the Faculty of Institutional Social Communication of the Santa Croce University, Rome, who chose the official site of the Focolare Movement for their research. Their names are Oleksii Fedorovych, Fr Rastislav Hamráček and Fr Tiago José Síbula da Silva. Introducing their research they say that www.focolare.org was set up in 1998, updated in 2006 and had a complete overhaul in 2011. It then received the WeCa Prize 2011 * in the Institutional Websites category. They say, ‘The general mission of www.focolare.org is to be a place of welcome for everyone and, at the same time, it has the task of giving expression, in dialogue with the world, to the unity and the diversity of those who make up the Focolare family and to typical Focolare events.’
Our visitors. The vast majority of visitors, 44%, are Italian speakers. On average on each visit they looked at 2.98 pages, spending 3.45 minutes. Navigations to the site were more by men than women. But this larger amount of men is a reflection of the fact that in general many more men use the internet. If the fact that people navigate to the site from work rather than from home is linked to GoogleAnalytics’s data on loyalty, it indicates that the site is visited especially during weekdays. Indeed, in the period from the 1 January to 30 March, according to GoogleAnalytics, the day with the largest amount of hits is generally, as we have said, a Monday.
Internet traffic. About half the visitors (48.5% in the period between 1 January and 30 March) came to it via search engines. Of these visits 44.2% came from Google with search terms such as focolare.org, Focolare Movement, www.focolare.org and Focolare. 4 % of the visits originated from media such as mobile phones, iPads or iPhones. A large amount (37.4%) came via Facebook.
Who is behind the site? The study analysed the composition of the editors of focolare.org and spoke of a real workforce with a broad range of editors made up of representatives from various Focolare centres, correspondents in every nation, technical experts, news editors, translators and a fixed team of four people together with a part-time worker for social networking.
Contents and the site’s best page. Looking at the site’s contents and observing its ‘informative and formative character’, the researchers emphasize the site’s ‘consistency’ with ‘the values of the Movement’. Appreciation was expressed because it publishes not only news about the Roman Catholic Church but about all of the Churches, world religions, people of convictions not based on religion and about issues of a social nature that offer insights into life in various parts of the world. In conclusion the page of the ‘Word of Life’ is said to be done well, with its Bible quotation and commentary. ‘This page,’ write the researches, ‘has great formative value and is among the best of the site’s contents, gaining many hits and comments from users.’
* Italian Association of Catholic Webmasters
Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti were welcomed by a colorful carpet of flowers from ancient religious tradition and by a festive atmosphere at the Our Lady of the Focolarini Mariapolis Center in the Guatemala capital. This is the first stop on an extended visit to Latin America. They have come to visit “the family of Chiara” that lives in this corner of the world. It has been an intense journey in which they have met civil and ecclesiastical authorities and representatives from various lay organizations who are members or friends of the Focolare. It has been a story of life and relationships that have been sown and nourished by Chiara Lubich’s charism of unity. Some have travelled from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Belize. The ancient cultures of the region are living on in them: Maya, Garifuna, Garifuna, the Incas and Mestizos. A set of dances is offered by children and teens who attend the Fiore Educational Centre in Guatemala City. One moment of the program is dedicated to Fiore Ungaro, a focolarina who first brought the spirituality of unity to these lands. Today the education center has 210 students with 28 teachers and staff. It is a concrete answer of love by the people of the focolare, because as in all Latin American countries, education is perhaps the decisive battlefront in which the wounds of this society will be defeated. The Bishop of Escuintla, Victor Hugo Palma Paúl was also present at a meeting with representatives from ten Movements who are members of the “Comisión de Movimientos Laicales y Nuevas Comunidades” (Commision of Lay Movements and New Communities), an agency of the Bishops Conference of Guatemala. He welcomed Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti: “The Focolare is one of the most vibrant schools that we have.” “Your charism is one that enflames, welcomes and warms the Christian life, placing the accent on unity.” Forty focolarini and focolarine live in this Central American country. They come from Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia and Italy. They are the “heart” of the Focolare Movement and a true reflection of it: different ethnic groups, professions, political, social and economic sensibilities. Maria Voce listens and, at the conclusion of the meeting, shares an idea: Unity should pass through a “culture of trust”. “It is a matter of having absolute trust in the other, in the sister or brother. The other wants what I want – unity. Let what you do not be done to be admired, to assert yourself or so that you may stand out. Let it be done for the sake of unity. Each of you works in a different way, but let each one work for unity. To trust in God and in the other, therefore, is an imperative. It means believing that God is at work. He doesn’t need perfect people, but only those people of whom he has need.” There was folkloristic costume and dance, engaging rhythms and sounds. Six hundred people gathered in the Mariapolis Centre hall. They were all members of the Focolare community living in these lands. This history of the Focolare in Central America goes back to 1954 and it is extraordinary because of the war, the economic difficulties, and the great distances. Yet it is a story that expresses gratitude to God. “Your peoples,” Maria Voce concluded, “seem to me to have a destiny: that of showing what the world would be if account were taken of the value of each human being. Everyone’s experience is necessary to others in order to construct a mosaic of unmatched beauty.” During a meeting with more than 200 youths between the ages of 15 and 25, a deep relationship was established in which, amid the exuberant joy of being together, there also emerged the difficulty of going against the current when it came to making certain choices: “You’re not alone,” Maria Voce told them, “each time that you find yourselves before a choice you must make, remember that you’re not alone, but that all the youths who have made the choice for a united world are with you.”