Message of Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare Movement, to all those who are preparing for the next Genfest 2024, the event of the Movement’s young people that will take place in Aparecida, Brazil, and in different parts of the world with various local Genfests.
A song born from the concrete experience of some young people of the Focolare Movement who, by putting their talents together, were able to transform, into music and words, their desire to get stuck in, so as to make a difference. https://youtu.be/m2NXAENhgiI
Journalists, teachers, communication experts: an international workshop on the synodal path “What Communication for Synodality?” This was the title of a webinar on 7 March live on Youtube, born after a long discussion among communication experts. A synodal path started last year with monthly meetings. Thus on the initiative of NetOne, the international network of communicators of the Focolare Movement, the idea of the webinar was developed. During the first session of the Synod last October, Pope Francis had asked the participants to ‘fast from’ the word. “Real communication has a rhythm to be respected with a time to be silent and a time to speak,” said Bishop Brendan Leahy, a member of the Synod Assembly who joined the webinar from Limerick in Ireland. “Synodality involves asceticism, the ability to look inside ourselves and offer the ‘distilled wine”, using the right words not empty words that lead to gossip. I think the Pope is inviting us above all to imitate Mary, in her contemplation”. “A synodal Church is essentially a Church of communion which becomes real when there is a communication of each one’s gifts,” said Msgr. Piero Coda, secretary of the International Theological Commission, who also spoke at the event. “It’s important to focus on the quality of communication: not giving opinionated answers but discovering the real questions that dwell in society so as to be able to give prophetic answers”. Bishop Coda’s words were echoed by Thierry Bonaventura, communications manager of the General Secretariat of the Synod when he said: “Communication forms the basis of any human relationship. God is communication, He communicates Himself, He is dialogue between the Persons of the Trinity. All the issues that emerged during the first session of the Synod last October are linked to the theme of relationality. Communication permeated the Synod even if there was a preference for communicating rather than thinking about communication”. This was followed by a speech from Argentina’s Isabel Gatti, NetOne’s international coordinator: “From the theory of communication, it is possible to offer keys to interpretation so that the philosophical and theological concepts of synodality can improve our ecclesial practices on an individual level as well as on a more social level”. “Our Church can be a family if, like Jesus and Mary, we take on the pains of suffering humanity that today has so many faces connected with communication – social polarisations, wars, social inequalities”. An example of a synodal path is the reform of Vatican communication. “The Pope desires an outward looking Church where there is a place for everyone,” says Msgr. Lucio Adrian Ruiz, secretary of the Dicastery for Communication. “This implies communication that on the one hand embraces all the new technologies and on the other hand does not forget any of the old ones because no one must remain excluded. Then there is the experience of the digital Synod, a missionary process to go and bring Jesus’ caress, his proclamation to people who do not live in the Church’s institutions”. Space was then given to artificial intelligence. How does it affect us in our profession as communicators? “The answer can be given in three words: knowledge, creativity and responsibility,” said Giovanni Tridente, Director of Communications at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross linked up from Rome. “We need to know about this technological innovation in order to understand how to use it. It must be used creatively to improve our lives and it must be used responsibility, also from an ethical point of view, to make people aware and free to form their own opinions”. Finally, the speech by Liliane Mugombozi, a journalist from the Democratic Republic of Congo: ‘When we communicate we are giving something of ourselves, our view of the world, the values we believe in, our fears, our sorrows, but also our achievements, our victories, our doubts, our hopes, our deepest questions. An act of communication can be a gift that encourages people to meet together, that creates contexts of dialogue and trust even in difficult situations, and to walk together. An Amhara (Ethiopia) proverb says that ‘when spiderwebs join together, they can even trap a lion’. Finally, space for dialogue and questions, experiences and impressions. There was a desire to convey and experience more incisive and sincere communication. This webinar is only the beginning of a journey of synodality and communication For info: net4synodcom@gmail.com
Lorenzo Russo
(…) Easter will soon be here. It’s the greatest feast of the year and with it comes Holy Week which is filled with the most precious mysteries of Jesus’ life.
We are reminded of these especially on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and on Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. For us,they represent central aspects of our spirituality: the mandate to live the new commandment, the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist, the prayer for unity, the death of Jesus forsaken on the cross, Mary Desolate, the Risen Lord.
We will celebrate these mysteries with the Church through the sacred liturgies, but because ours is a “way of life” we will prepare ourselves to honour them also with our life. (…)
So what should we live as Holy Week draws near, during these blessed days?
I think the best way to live all of them is to live Easter, to let the Risen Lord live in us.
For the Risen Lord to shine out in us, we must love Jesus forsaken and always be, as we say, “beyond His wound” where charity reigns. Charity then encourages us to be the new commandment in action. Charity urges us to approach the Eucharist which nourishes this divine love in our heart and truly makes us become what we are consuming, that is, the Risen Jesus. Charity leads us to live in unity with God and with our brothers and sisters. It is through charity that each of us can, in a certain way, be another Mary.
Yes, there is no better way to live the various aspects of Jesus’ life recalled during Holy Week than by deciding in each present moment to let the Risen Lord live in us. (…)
Chiara Lubich
(Chiara Lubich, Per essere un popolo di Pasqua, 24 marzo 1994 in Conversazioni in collegamento telefonico, Città Nuova, 2019, pp. 461-2)
A passage from Chiara Lubich’s speech in Rome, in 2000, during the XV World Youth Day, attended by over two million young people from all over the world. (Tor Vergata – Rome, 19 August 2000). https://youtu.be/My3XSN8RNcE
Msgr. Piero Coda, theologian, Secretary of the International Theological Commission, former Dean of Sophia University Institute, received an honorary degree from the Catholic University of Córdoba in Argentina. A week of events marked the beginning of March 2024 at the Catholic University of Córdoba (UCC) in Argentina. These included: the Córdoba 2024 Itinerary Seminar, Jesuit University and Trinitarian Anthropology, and the conferral of an honorary doctorate on Msgr. Piero Coda, theologian, Secretary of the International Theological Commission, and former Dean of the Sophia University Institute. Other related events made known the thought and contribution of Msgr. Coda, which is not limited to anthropology and theology, but reaches out to the 
Church in its synodal journey and that of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. The Trinitarian Anthropology Seminar was held from March 4 to 6. The study group, which has been active for 11 years, consists of 14 people, women and men, Franciscans, Jesuits, priests, religious, focolarini and lay people from different church movements. Sonia Vargas Andrade, of the Faculty of Theology, San Pablo of the Bolivian Catholic University, said: “We met to reflect on the path that a Latin American theologian should follow in dialogue with European theology, particularly Trinitarian Anthropology, taking into account what is typically ours, namely the plurality”. The seminar concluded by highlighting that the distinctive element of Trinitarian Theology – the subject of the group’s study – is precisely unity in plurality: “the other’s thinking is as good as my own, I have to think from the other and in the other”, added Vargas Andrade. Msgr. Piero Coda shared his first-hand experience and his view of the first session of the synodal assembly, in which he participated as a member of the Theological Commission of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. Coda defined the first session as a pause to learn how to meet, listen to each other and dialogue in the Spirit. And he added: “The journey has just begun. Patience and perseverance must go hand in hand with wisdom and prudence, but also with enthusiasm and the courage to take risks”. 
Dr. Tommaso Bertolasi, professor at Sophia University Institute in Loppiano (FI), closed the discussion by addressing the theme “youth and synodality,” stressing that young people experience the absent God: “God is experienced as the absent one, the one who is not there”. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the experience of Jesus’ abandonment on the cross. “It is right there, in death and resurrection, that God enters every human experience: from that moment on, there is no more distance from God, because God is in the absence of God”. From this thesis he deduced several implications for the church in general, especially for youth ministry. 
March 6 was the day of the conferral of the honorary doctorate to Msgr. Piero Coda. On this occasion, Cardinal Ángel Rossi S.J., Archbishop of Córdoba, called Piero Coda a “pilgrim of truth, who lived his life in the spirit of exodus and this has led him to leave his own ‘land’ in order to put his thought and theological insights in permanent dialogue with different cultures, with those who do not profess an explicit faith or with other disciplines”. Father Gonzalo Zarazaga S.J., Director of the UCC Doctoral Program in Theology, in presenting Coda’s contribution, said that “Piero Coda’s Trinitarian Ontology opens us to the intimacy of the Triune God and invites us to participate in his love in fullness”. Rabbi Silvina Chemen, through a video message, expressed her affection, admiration and gratitude to Piero Coda for his work in strengthening interreligious ties with the Focolare Movement In his words of gratitude, Msgr. Piero Coda said he considered the recognition he received as an appreciation of the style of understanding and implementation of philosophical and theological work, which is proving to be highly relevant in the process of synodal and missionary reform in which the Church is engaged under the leadership of Pope Francis. He added, “It’s about learning from each other, listening together to what the Spirit is saying to the churches: in exchanging the gifts of each other’s experiences of inculturation of faith and mission, of which our communities and cultures are bearers”. His lectio magistralis was entitled. “Inhabiting the reciprocity of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit to revive the meaning and destiny of history”.
María Laura Hernández Photo: courtesy of UCC and Guillermo Blanco