Trelew
Rosario
Paraná
Mariápolis Lía
Resistencia
Mendoza
Tucumán
Neuquén
Salta
Philippines: at the school of religions
From the 1st- 3rd April the School for Oriental Religions (SOR) organised a course in the Focolare’s little-town called ‘Peace’ in Tagaytay (Philippines). There were 250 participants from all around Asia: Pakistan, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The majority of those who took part were from various islands in the Philippines especially Manila and Cebu.
SOR was founded in 1982 by Chiara Lubich on her first trip to Asia when dialogue between members of the Focolare Movement and the mahayana Buddhists from the Rissho Kosei kai began. SOR runs biennial courses that aim at giving formation to Christians from around Asia for dialogue with members of the continent’s religious traditions. Both in 2009 and in this year’s course, opportunities for an exchange of experiences accompanied the formation.
Visiting SOR one can not help but think of the Ancient Greece’s ‘Agora’: a place to openly discus challenges and problems that arise in the various cultural contexts such as Pakistan. It also provides an occasion to share prophetic experiences such as the dialogue that takes place with the monastic Theravada Buddhism in Thailand. We can’t leave out the recent events in Japan: following the earthquake and nuclear crisis members of the Focolare and of the Rissho Kosei kai managed to face the tragedy together in a true spirit of friendship and reciprocal support thanks to the relationships already built. Dialogue at an academic and social level in India with various Gandhian organisations and academic institutes also shows great promise.
Despite many common spiritual characteristics that can be seen throughout Asia, each country and cultural area has its specific traditions. Differences can also be seen in the relationships between Christians and members of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and cultures such as Confucianism and Taoism. The Focolare Movement experiences the challenges that the Catholic Church faces in these worlds at first hand.
During the presentations given by the working groups at SOR’s course, dialogue and evangelisation clearly emerged as two different aspects of the Church’s sole mission; a mission that must place personal and, above all, communitarian witness at top importance so as to guarantee a constructive and credible presence for announcing Jesus Christ. On the other hand Asian cultures often gather and intuit aspects of faith that Western Christianity have not yet valued nor deeply understood.
This year the School for Oriental Religions focused on the aspect of love in the different cultural and faith traditions. The presence of Archbishop Mons. Francis Xavier Kriegesak, the school’s dean was much appreciated as well as the contributions given by the monk prof. Phramaha Sanga Chaiwong, abbot of an important temple near Chang Mai in the North of Thailand, and by Julkipli Wadi, a Muslim professor of Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines.
Three days of dialogue and exchange that will produce “suitable antidotes for fundamentalism and intemperance”, not only in the long run but straight away.
Source: Città Nuova
Spirituality of Communion at DePaul University in Chicago
“I will show you the way of wisdom” is DePaul University’s motto and it shows up here and there on its campus. The university was founded at the end of the 19th century by the Congregation of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul, with the goal of providing proper education to the children of Catholic immigrants to Chicago. Today it has 25 thousand students and it has been ranked among the “top tier” universities in the United States.
The motto, taken from the Book of Proverbs, acquired a special meaning during World Catholicism Week organized by the university, the first day of which was dedicated to the theme “Catholic spirituality: a global communion”. Various personalities spoke during the week. On that first day, April 11, a number of roundtable discussions took place, some simultaneously, and some scholars from the Focolare Movement were called to present various aspects of the communal dimension of the spirituality of Chiara Lubich. Dr Judith Povilus presented the interdisciplinary, multi-ethnic and intercultural experience of the University Sophia in Loppiano. Dr Donald Mitchell discussed the connection between environmentalism and interreligious dialogue; and Dr Paul O’Hara discussed the Marian dimension of the Church.
Maria Voce, finally, gave a talk with the title “Spirituality and Trinitarian Theology in the Life and Thought of Chiara Lubich”. In a room full of academic personalities and representatives of the Catholic world, the Focolare’s president underlined four aspects of the spirituality of communion: God-love, love for our neighbour, mutual love, and Jesus Forsaken as key to the achievement of unity. She dwelled in particular on the mystery of Jesus Forsaken viewed as a secret way to heal all wounds caused by division and fragmentation.
Maria Voce used Chiara Lubich’s experience of light in the summer of 1949 and her intuitions about the spirituality of communion as mirror of the life of the Trinity as a reference point for some passages of Chiara’s she read to the audience. At the end she underlined the deep agreement between the spirituality of communion and the ideas expressed in John Paul II’s apostolic letter Novo Millennio Inuente, and presented the challenge of Sophia University, which aims at “providing foundations and perspectives of global learning, of a culture that springs from the charism of unity and that is the fruit of communitarian spirituality lived deeply as a mirror of the life of the Trinity.”
Two theologians, Dr Tom Norris of the International Theological Commission and Dr David Schindler, director of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America responded to Maria Voce. Both emphasized, albeit from different perspectives, the contemporary relevance of Chiara Lubich’s Trinitarian thought and the courage contained in her proposal to the Church and to today’s theological thinking. Norris mentioned that a theologian recently claimed that the Trinity is the grammar of every theology. Schindler highlighted the Marian dimension of Chiara’s communitarian spirituality and her capacity to respond in a positive manner to the Enlightenment.
It was impossible at that end of that day not to think of the connection between the “way of wisdom” proposed by DePaul University to its students and Chiara Lubich’s charism of communion, a gift from God to walk better on the way to wisdom.
Roberto Catalano
Budapest
Please note: The geolocalisation feature on this website – which displays cities and towns where Focolare centres are present – is only meant to be a guide. The markers on the map do not necessarily point to a specific address and they must not be relied on for navigational purposes.
Còrdoba
Interreligious Meeting in Chicago
The Kehilath Anshe Maarav (KAM) synagogue of Chicago, built in 1847, was the ideal place for the gathering of 200 faithful of different religions. Located in Hyde Park on 50th Avenue, it was the first synagogue ever build in the Midwest. Its very architecture seems inspired by a desire for dialogue. Lutherans, Armenians, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians were present to the meeting.
About thirty of the people present took turns on the stage to share moments of spiritual communion they experienced in the course of the last thirty years by living the spirit of brotherhood exemplified by Chiara Lubich when she met representatives of various faiths throughout the world. Those meetings were seeds of prophecy that, one by one, came to fruition. The participants remembered with emotion the meeting between Chiara Lubich and Imam W. D. Mohammed in the Malcolm Shabazz mosque in Harlem in 1997, and later in Washington D.C. in 2000; the two leaders made a pact of mutual love which continues to these days among their respective organizations.
The representative of the Buddhist movement Rissho Kosei Kai remembered the meeting between Chiara and founder Nikkyo Niwano.
Emily Soloff, associate director for Interreligious Relations of the American Jewish Committee, one the people who emceed the event, said that moments of dialogue with members of the Focolare remind her of the Jewish Sabbath because of their solemnity and sense of family. Sister Laila Mohammed, daughter of the late Imam W. D. Mohammed, echoed those feelings: she said that the meeting between Christians and Muslims she attended in Rome had great spiritual depth and brought to her the same spiritual fruits of a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Prof. Donald Mitchell, Imam Mikal Saahir and Imam Kareem Irfan recounted an experience of dialogue between academics and religious leaders they had during a joint trip to Asia. In the Philippines and Thailand, in particular, the spirit of universal brotherhood felt by everyone who met in the Focolare centers gave hope that dialogue can bring a solution to the conflicts with Muslim minorities that afflict the South of both countries.
Young people who work in collaborative social projects aimed to people in need also shared their experiences.
At the end, Maria Voce, president of the Focolare, and co-president Giancarlo Faletti greeted those present and answered questions presented by a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew. The answers brought into evidence that the dialogue conducted by the Focolare has its origin in Chiara Lubich’s dream to contribute to the unification of the human family, and is thus not the responsibility of only a part of the Focolare movement but of everyone – young people and adults, the elderly and children. Giancarlo Faletti emphasized that, while the day had been a trip down memory lane that allowed everyone to remember the milestones of their common history, it was important not to dwell in nostalgia but to strengthen their mutual love.
At the end Maria Voce said: “Often religions have been like spheres that brushed one another. Then people came along who pierced these spheres so that the wealth of each could be shared by the others. This was the prophetic role of Chiara Lubich, Nikkyo Niwano, Dadaji of the Swadhyay movement, Imam W. D. Mohammed, and others. Thanks to them we were able to discover riches we weren’t aware of. Fear has gone. Now we must continue on this path.” The attendees responded to this invitation with a standing ovation. Some said: “We bring to our communities the wealth we have discovered. You help the Focolare; together we will help humanity.”
Roberto Catalano
[nggallery id=31]
San José
Florida
Aeroparque
Rivera
Salto
Tacuarembó
Canelones
Las Piedras
Nueva Vida
Focolar Montevideo
Ciudad de la Costa
Centro Mariapoli “El Pelicano”
Minas
Mariapolis Centre “Spes – Upanje”
Ivory Coast: the Focolare a permanent witness
The humanitarian emergency caused by conflicts in the Ivory Coast, with thousands of refugees and displaced people, has engaged international NGOs who, in collaboration with the local church, strive to provide aid and refuge to as many people as possible. 600km west of the country’s capital, near Man there is one of the Focolare Movement’s ‘little towns’ which seeks to be a permanent witness of brotherhood and evangelical love. How are its inhabitants reacting to the country’s present crisis?
Adriana Masotti from Vatican Radio asked this question to Vitoria Franciscati, the director of the Focolare’s Centre in the Ivory Coast for 20 years:
We are involved in humanitarian aid in a fairly direct way. Man has become a reception centre because there’s a conflict zone 80km to the west and a large number of people have fled from the very difficult situation. People also come here from the capital Abidjan and we, along with others throughout the diocese, have offered our strengths to receive as many refugees as we can. In our little town we have a medicine dispensary, a clinic and a centre for the fight against malnutrition. The number of abandoned patients and small children (often along with a grandparent) is growing. This work has therefore become more demanding and is being brought ahead. We are also a reference point for humanitarian organisations that come to the region to help the fight against hunger: Médicins sans Frontiers, Red Cross and so on. There is no water in the city and so people come here to our well. Electricity is often down and we have we share our generator that runs for a few hours a day. There’s lots of collaboration therefore with everyone.
You are far from the capital but there are members of the Focolare community who live in Abidjan near Gbagbo’s residence which is hit by the conflicts. What is their experience at the moment?
Our members are present in neighbourhoods throughout the city especially in the outgoing president’s neighbourhood. We are in contact with them various times a day and they are determined and committed to living and spreading a Gospel-based lifestyle, to being builders of peace through a life of love: it’s the only force capable of disarming hearts, the most difficult but most necessary task at present.
The country has been split into two blocs with opposition even within families. How do they deal with this division?
This is the point: starting from home, from the family. Some kids tell us, “I don’t know my father any more, I don’t recognise him”, because division has penetrated; it’s something that deeply pierces. It wasn’t like that before. Ivorians however are very sensitive people and are ready to change, they’re not so hardhearted. We must therefore have faith in them; they are a welcoming people who are used to cohabitation of different ethnic groups and religions. There have never been problems in that regard.
What is the principle contribution that you want to give and that you have committed yourselves to giving to Ivorian society?
Brotherhood. The “Golden Rule”: do unto others as you would have done unto you. That is our specific contribution.
Lived in a concrete way day by day, trying to love the other even if he’s different…
Exactly. Accepting those who are different from me, who have a different way of thinking. I believe that new political systems will arise, have to arise, from Africa’s cultural roots. Prayer, however, is very important at this time because hearts have been hardened and a grace from God is needed.
Source: Vatican Radio – Radio Giornale 10/04/2011
Rosario (Santa Fe)
Santa Fe
Reconquista (Santa Fe)
Avellaneda (Santa Fe)
Rafaela (Santa Fe)
Esperanza (Santa Fe)
El Trébol (Santa Fe)
Las Rosas (Santa Fe)
Las Parejas (Santa Fe)
Becoming Saints in the Midwest
When you arrive in Chicago from the East Coast you immediately realise that you’re in another world.
The city runs along Lake Michigan for 50 km. Despite our night-time arrival at Midway Airport, the urban skyline of modern, lit-up skyscrapers was truly striking. Here too the population is multiethnic but it’s somehow different from New York and Washington. Chicago, the third largest city in the US with its 3 million inhabitants (9 million if you include the suburbs), is the city with the second largest Polish population in the world. It also has particularly numerous Greek and Italian communities. Throughout the decades – at times centuries – these cultural groups have maintained a clear identity within their characteristic neighbourhoods. Recent generations, however, have contributed to increased integration.
Some neighbourhoods have had serious public order problems and sometimes you’re told not to cross certain streets if you want to avoid trouble. But in Illinois and throughout the Midwest religious values and traditions are still strong and families strive to pass them on to their children.
Shortly after its arrival in the USA 50 years ago, the Focolare Movement was instituted in Chicago. Since 1966, in the Hyde Park neighbourhood, a 19th Century mansion house – loaned to the Movement by the diocese – has hosted a Mariapolis Centre. Beside it, in just as pretty a house, is the women’s focolare centre. Over the past two years the neighbourhood had been under strict security surveillance: the Obama family residence is at the end of the road. The US President will here next week, people tell us. The men’s focolare centre is a 20 minute car drive – when traffic is good – in a suburb called Berwyn.
Not far away is another small town, North Riverside, with its own town hall and mayor. There Carol, a Volunteer who got to know the Movement back in the 60’s, gave life to a very touching experience. Carol, whose son has serious disabilities, is particularity sensitive to other’s pain. She built bridges all around her with people in the neighbourhood who were suffering for one reason or another. A network of reciprocal care was gradually formed, triggering a social revolution. By now the people who run the activity have been christened “army of angels” and the project is sponsored by the local government. It’s a true model of sustainable and reciprocal care for the emotionally or physically vulnerable, giving life to a distinctive art of caring for the suffering. Other municipalities have contacted River Side North to collaborate in overcoming seemingly impossible problems. Even the president of the Bahamas on hearing about the project asked for sponsorship to apply the same methodology in his country.
Focolare’s youth members organised a meeting for their peers which took place on Saturday afternoon in North Riverside’s Village Hall. They invited friends and acquaintances as well many other young people through personal contacts, Facebook, and the internet. It was difficult therefore to estimate the possible turn-out. The program was courageous: a presentation of Chiara Luce Badano’s life enriched by experiences of local young people in their everyday environment of school and work. A young ballerina came from Ohio for the event and presented the audience with an elegant piece of dance. Another young artist sang a song she wrote about Chiara Luce and her sainthood.
This inspired Maria Voce’s opening lines when she herself took to the stage to greet the young participants. She underlined that God continues to call each one of us to be saints today and that he does this through people like Chiara Luce who show us how to become saints with the help of others: family and friends who live for the same ideals. The Focolare president concluded by launching an appeal without half measures: “Do you want to be a saint? Then why not do it?” The response was a standing ovation, a sign that the message really struck a chord. We can’t deny that today in the Mid-West and through out the world there is a thirst for sainthood.
By our correspondent Roberto Catalano
[nggallery id=30]
[:it] La Croazia, con grande gioia ed unità, celebra il terzo anniversario della “partenza” di Chiara Lubich
[:it]Slovenia: “Raggi di Speranza”
Washington DC: Unity – a new frontier
“Americans always see a new frontier to be crossed. This is how they reached the moon. Wouldn’t you like reach unity?” Maria Voce said wrapping up her informal address at a meeting with Washington’s Focolare Community on the evening of 7th April.
300 local members of the Movement had come to spend two days together in the nation’s capital. Their meeting held at the Catholic University of America was enriched by an encounter with the country’s history.
Participants represented a true cross-section of the ethnic and cultural groups in this capital city that hosted some of the most memorable moments for the nation and many iconic turning points in the story of mankind: from the declaration of independence and the memorable speech by Abraham Lincoln right up to Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ and J.F.K.’s ‘The New Frontier’.
That morning Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti had visited the city’s historical sites, giving them an insight to the values that built this nation of peoples: simplicity, practicality, humility, readiness to forgive, openness to novelty, optimism, strength not to give up even when doors are closed. “They are extraordinary gifts that have come about thanks to the contribution of the many populations who came to these lands in the search of wellbeing. They may have gone to Colorado on a quest for gold but above all they were looking for freedom”, Maria Voce underlined. In the U.S., this freedom is in the air you breathe and in the heart of everyone who chose to come and live in the “New World”.
“You’ve reached the dream of freedom. Perhaps now is the time to do something for unity that, in a certain sense, you have also reached, thinking of the many cultures united in the USA”, continued the Focolare’s president. She confided however that the people she met over the past number of days expressed regret for the individualistic environment in which they live. Maria Voce then shared her impression that music in US- spirituals, jazz, rock and rap- seems to express its people’s ardent desire for unity- a comment that pleasantly surprised many. “The Spirituality of Unity could do something to help this dream come true… God sent the Charism of Unity here too. It’s a gift that can’t render me indifferent if I’ve received it”.
The evening’s program demonstrated how its participants, with their cultural and religious diversity, originate from all corners of the globe: Europe, Asia, the Middle-East, Cameroon. Noteworthy was the colourful presence of the 30 or so Bangwa-Cameroonians with Mafua Cristina who was on visit to the USA. Likewise the participation of a group of Afro-American Muslims with Imam Talib Sharif was particularly precious.
The Imam fondly remembered how, in 2000, Chiara Lubich launched ‘Operation Washington’ between members of the Focolare and Afro-American Muslims. He was doing military service at the time and the meeting deeply struck him. Afterwards, whilst waiting for a train back to his barracks, he found himself looking through the crowd to see if he could spot the smile of someone from the Movement. He didn’t see anyone but was reassured by the certainty that deep within him something had been edified and would be brought ahead by the relationship between Chiara and Imam W.D. Mohammed. On the 7th April in Washington, along with other Muslim brothers and sisters he witnessed that this relationship had been reinforced and developed.
Looking at the hall at the end of the two hour programme at the Catholic University of America, you could see the dream expressed on the Great Seal of the United States Government-E pluribus unum, Out of Many, One- coming true. “Which doesn’t mean that all are the same”, specified Maria Voce, “but that all are united”.
Roberto Catalano
San Carlos de Bariloche (Río Negro)
Viedma (Río Negro)
Villa Regina (Río Negro)
General Roca (Río Negro)
Cipolletti (Río Negro)
San Martín de los Andes (Neuquén)