![Doctor faces AIDS challenge in Congo]()
12 Jun 2013 | Non categorizzato
«I am a doctor specialized in infectious diseases, and I’ve been in contact with HIV positive and AIDS patients for the past 30 years. I deal with this pathology in the hospital where I work in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo.
I learned very early on in life to participate in the transformation of the society I live in. Thus one of the objectives of my life has been to create a new and just society in which the human person is the focus and there is concern for all members of the community. I decided to become a doctor in order to put myself at the service of my brothers and sisters.
When I finished my studies in medicine, I found myself having to face a tremendous challenge: working conditions were increasingly degrading, earnings were negligible. The material earnings for a doctor did not lead to professional conscientiousness and honesty. The only way to survive was to work in international organizations or in private clinics.
Many of my medical colleagues emigrated to Europe or to the United States. At one point I was tempted to do the same. After talking it over with my wife, we decided to stay in our country and accept the situation: poor patients, difficult working conditions, lack of materials and at times, insidious corruption.
I found courage in working together with doctors of the Focolare Movement and others who, like me, had the patient’s well-being at heart.In the beginning we were frightened by the possibility of being infected by the virus: poor hygienic conditions and inadequate healthcare structures did not offer any guarantee. During that period, our country was immersed in a socio-economic and political crisis. We no longer received any international aid. Then the war broke out with the load of dramas that every conflict brings. It was very difficult to treat the patients with AIDS, but we continued and it was really an opportunity to live love in a concrete way.
Our activities concretely focused on the treatment and prevention of AIDS.
With regard to the treatment of AIDS patients, with the help of AMU, we were able to build a complete healthcare facility with a lab for analyses. Furthermore, a treatment program began based on specific medicines, finally available also in Africa and guaranteed to everyone, including the poorest. Everything was the result of recent choices made by the UN to implement strategies aimed at defeating AIDS.
With regard to prevention, a systematic formation program began for educators and advertisement specialists aimed at intervening on the psychological, sociological and moral levels with young people and families, so as to bring about a change of behaviour in the population. The main content of the courses consists in giving complete and correct information on the transmission and prevention of the virus.
In fact, some think that it comes from manipulations of lab tests; others see it as coming from God because of sin, almost like a sort of punishment. These ideas, often linked to the African culture, are very difficult to weed out. This is why we try to go more deeply into the origin of the illness, the effects of the virus on the immune system and the means for preventing AIDS.
Besides the development of productive activities to improve basic nutrition, we also tried to guarantee psycho-social support for the patients and their families».
(M.M. Congo)
![Doctor faces AIDS challenge in Congo]()
7 Jun 2013 | Non categorizzato
I come from Brazil, the fifth of a family of six children, two of whom were born from the previous marriage of my father, who was then left a widower. I was just one year old when dad left home, leaving behind my pregnant mother who was unable to take up a job because we children were still quite small. Since we had no close relatives and our father did not contribute to our livelihood, the situation turned critical. Practically we had nothing to eat and many bills to pay! Mum decided to sell some of the furniture in the house to cover the immediate needs and we remained only with the essential things.
Lizomar Dos Santos
Video: meeting of the movements, associations and lay groups, in St. Peter’s Square with Pope Francis.. Introduction: Songs and testimonies (Contains the testimony of Lizomar Dos Santo)
31 May 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. Peter advises them not to give in to the instinctive reactions that such situations provoke, but to do what Jesus would do. He urges them to respond with love and to see such difficulties and lack of understanding as a grace, that is, something God allows so they can demonstrate the true Christian spirit. Besides, like this with their love they will be able to bring to Christ even those who do not understand them. But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. Some people use this sentence and others like it to accuse Christianity of encouraging excessive submissiveness, dulling people’s consciences and making them less active in the struggle against injustice. But this is not so. If Jesus asks us to love those who do not understand or who treat us badly, it is not because he wants to make us insensitive to injustice. Far from it! It is because he wants to teach us how to build a truly just society. This can be done by spreading the spirit of true love, beginning ourselves to be the first to love. But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. How should we live the Word of Life this month? There are many ways today in which we too can be misunderstood or treated badly. They range from a lack of tact and rudeness to malicious judgements, ingratitude, offensive behaviour and real injustices. We can say this: even on all these occasions we have to give witness to the love that Jesus brought to earth for everyone and so, also, for those who treat us badly. The Word of Life this month wants to tell us that, even in the legitimate defence of justice and truth, we ought never to forget that our first duty, as Christians, is to love others. We have to treat them with that new attitude, made of understanding, acceptance and mercy, which Jesus had for us. In this way, even when we defend our ideas, we will never break relationships, never give in to the temptation to resent others or to take revenge on them. Acting like this, as instruments of Jesus’ love, we too will be able to bring our neighbours to God.
Chiara Lubich
(First published May 1990)
Each month a Scripture passage is offered as a guide and inspiration for daily living. This commentary, translated into 96 different languages and dialects, reaches several million people worldwide through print, radio, television and the Internet. Ever since the Focolare’s beginnings, founder Chiara Lubich (1920–2008) wrote her commentaries each month. This one was originally published in May 1990.
Read more: Brandl, Gary and Tom Ess, OFM. “Trustworthy Witness,” The Gospel in Action: A New Evangelization Day by Day, New City Press, 2013, p.54–61. Lubich, Chiara. Christian Living Today: Meditations, New City Press, 1997 Lubich, Chiara, “Even Our Enemies,” The Art of Loving, New City Press, 2005, p.41. Next month’s Word of Life: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal 5:14)
![Doctor faces AIDS challenge in Congo]()
28 May 2013 | Non categorizzato
The beatification of Fr Pino Puglisi on May 25, 2013, is becoming a symbol of the struggle against the Mafia and modern forms of slavery. The young people of the Focolare are also working to build up the rule of law.
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I cannot do this! I cannot make us, my brothers and sisters, into slaves!’ The words of Pope Francis at the Angelus on 26 May come to mind and they echo John Paul II’s powerful and passionate words in 1993 against Mafia members in the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, only a few months after the murder of Don Puglisi. Twenty years after his death, Fr Pino Puglisi has been proclaimed ‘Blessed’ in Palermo in Sicily.
He was slaughtered on 15 September 1993 by contract killers from the Mafia family in control of the Brancaccio district where Don Puglisi lived and worked ceaselessly as the Parish Priest of St Gaetano’s church. He ‘educated the young in the Gospel’ and helped them escape lives of crime, as Pope Francis recalled. Among the 80,000 participants at the beatification ceremony, there was a large group from the Focolare Movement, many of whom were young people from various parts of Sicily.
The ceremony in Palermo had been planned for a long time. In fact, Youth for a United World worked for months in the ‘Cantiere Legalità’, a project to establish the rule of law run by Progetto Italia, and they were looking forward to meeting one another on this occasion of celebration. They hoped to have a further experience of solidarity with the people of Palermo and elsewhere committed to building up the rule of law. While Fr Puglisi was being beatified in Sicily, about a 100 young people from the ‘Cantiere Legalità’ were meeting together in Milan to discuss the issue of the Mafia, looking at its roots and ways of operating and studying strategies to combat it.
T
he next event for Italian young people belonging to the Focolare Movement will be in Caserta (29 July – 2 August 2013). Here they will share their experiences and insights from the last few months as they have considered three themes to do with the rule of law: care for immigrants, the environment and work.
The commitment to legality in Sicily by the Focolare began long ago. Chiara Lubich herself in Palermo in 1998 spoke on this very topic in response to questions from several people. She urged those who were seriously committed to working for the common good to unite, starting from Catholic groups and Movements, and promote a ‘civilization of love’. She hoped they would consolidate and raise the profile of the work done on a daily basis to overcome the destructive presence of the Mafia.
What happened in the following years certainly bore fruit. Both Youth a United World and Youth for Unity were on the same coaches as young people from other groups and associations. They all shared the same longing for a world where people are united and live as one family.
Even more than this, showing the network built up over the years in Palermo, young people (who were of every age) wanted to go on two significant visits. The first was to the association Libera where they found out more about their work in Mafia-controlled places. The second was to the Community of Sant’Egidio who gave them a chance to talk with people who actually knew Don Puglisi. At this second event the Youth for Unity from Palermo explained what they were doing in their city and in particular in the Brancaccio district. They said they had painted some excellent murals in the very square where Fr Puglisi was killed, and even after months no one had touched them. In bold letters they had written: ‘The Golden Rule: Treat others as you want them to treat you.’
![Doctor faces AIDS challenge in Congo]()
26 May 2013 | Non categorizzato
Professor Mohammad Shomali is very active in the field of interfaith dialogue. He is Dean of Postgraduate studies at the Department of International Affairs at Jami’at al-Zahra and is also the Director of the International Institute for Islamic Studies, Qom, Iran. He has been instrumental in organising events with Benedictine monks, Mennonites and has taken three delegations of post-graduate Iranian students to Rome to have spiritual contacts with Christianity. He was recently in Rome with a group of women students. We publish an extract of an interview with him.
Recently, you led a delegation of young women students to Rome. What was your and their experience?
In May 2013, my wife and I accompanied a group of ten women currently doing post-graduate studies at Jami’atul Zahra, the largest Islamic seminary for women in Iran in the city of Qom. This was my 7th visit to Italy but I can say that it was the most successful (…) as over time you establish trust and you have a deeper level of friendship and dialogue. 
What is your experience of dialogue within the Focolare Movement; what are the characteristics of this dialogue?
(…) For us, the Focolare Movement served as a gateway to Christianity. With our Focolare friends we feel at ease as they have a deep sense of commitment to God, a profound love for God and humanity, and at the same time they have a great openness. (…) You feel that they do their best to accommodate you ; they make you feel that together we can work for the good.
I am sure that this charism of Chiara – her spirituality – was a gift from God in the 20th century and our hope is that it will continue to bear fruits in this 21st century. I very much also liked the idea of unity in that we should act as a community; we should think together, we should plan together, we should work together, and it’s very similar to what I think is the core message of Islam, especially in the school of the Ahlulbayt (Shia Islam) that we very much focus on the love which must exist between believers.
Therefore I find the spirituality of the Focolare very interesting. What they preach and what they exhibit in their character both confirm that we can achieve a lot if we have genuine love for God and for neighbour.
![Doctor faces AIDS challenge in Congo]()
21 May 2013 | Non categorizzato
‘It was a moment of deep, intimate and peaceful emotion,’ Maria Voce said in describing the atmosphere this morning at the mass celebrated by Pope Francis in the chapel of Casa Santa Marta, where she had been invited with Giancarlo Faletti, the Focolare’s Co-President. The words of the Pope’s homily were particularly significant. They were based on the Gospel for the day (Mk 9:30-37) where it is clear that Christian progress means to become more humble and that power in the Church is service: ‘Real power is service. As He did, He who came not to be served but to serve, and His service was the service of the Cross. He humbled Himself unto death, even death on a cross for us, to serve us, to save us. And there is no other way in the Church to move forward. For the Christian, going ahead, progress, means humbling oneself. If we do not learn this Christian rule, we will never, ever be able to understand Jesus’ true message on power.’ Greeting him the end of mass, Maria Voce told the Holy Father of the prayers and the gratitude of the whole Focolare Movement: ‘We all committed to living what you say to the letter, in particular to go out and meet other people because in others we meet Christ.’ ‘That’s just what’s needed,’ the Pope relied, ‘a culture of encounter!’
CCTV service – Pope Francis: True power, even in the Church, is in serving others (21.5.2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HquzYPDPGq0
