On 20 March the new parish church, dedicated to Christ the Saviour, was inaugurated in Mendicino, in Cosenza, Italy. The event was celebrated on the anniversary of Msgr. Nunnari and it fulfilled the dream of the entire parish community, composed of 10,000 inhabitants, which now enjoys a place of worship of an extremely unique structure. It comprises about 15 rooms for catechism lessons, a meeting hall and presbytery. The project, carried out by means of technical support by local experts, was designed by The Ave Arts Centre in Loppiano, which designs are inspired by research done through the years by a team of architects who work in the little town of the Focolare.

Apart from its constant internal reflection, this group aims at building a relationship of synergy also with architects in other parts of the world. Last December, for example, they participated at an international conference organised in Barcelona, Spain, by the Association of Catalonian Architects, on the theme of sacred patrimony. The team of architects took part not only as representatives of the Arts Centre in Loppiano, but also as part of the “Dialogue in Architecture” inundation of the Focolare Movement, which is composed of scholars and professionals whose main focus and interest revolves around the theme of architecture.

During this conference in Spain, three of the architects, Mario Mario Tancredi and Iole Parisi from Italy, and Tobias Klodwig from Germany, were asked to do a presentation entitled: “Flexible Christianity – Community Life and Sacred Spaces”. The approach that was presented greatly interested the 150 architects from Spain and other European countries who attended the conference.

The three speakers started off by explaining how forms and spaces in the field of architecture change according to the experience of different Christian communities. This generated a discussion and a reflection on the fact that architecture is always enriched by elements that are “intangible”, by what the very concept of “sacred” can assume in various cultural contexts: the strong social values perceived in Latin America; the prophetic ancestral signs found in Africa; the value of symbolic expressions contained in European cathedrals and churches in globalized metropolises. They pointed out a few concrete examples to illustrate this: the Church in Loppiano called Maria Théotokos, which is an expression of a contemporary charism, the Church of St Claire in Fontem, Africa, which communicates the values ​​of the local culture, and some projects where disused churches in Germany had undergone a transformation.

With regards to the cultural research that “Dialogue in Architecture” aims to develop, it’s in continual evolution, driven by the need to bring together – precisely because it has to do with the Absolute One – continuity and innovation,and this is achieved by means of a dialogue which is evermore constructive both with the clientele and the academic world.