Page 87 – Movimento dei Focolari

Benedict XVI’s resignation: some impressions

Feb 24, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

What was your first reaction when you heard about Benedict’s XVI resignation? What aspects of his pontificate do you appreciate? What do you wish the new Pope?

Here are some excerpts from their answers.

«In the beginning I could not believe it. Then I understood that the Holy Father had decided to take this step for the good of the Church. Since I have lived together with catholic brothers and sisters, I deeply understand that the essence of this ministry is of a spiritual nature. I want to be united with him and with the other Christians in prayer, for the election of the new Pope, so that the Church may go ahead for the good of humanity». Metta, Buddhist from Thailand

«I think it is a wise decision; since he carries out his role in the name of God, there is no doubt that God is with him. His action is unparalleled and sets an example for all humanity. His decision to retire to a monastery is also something great. My wishes for the new Pope are that with the help of God, he may be even more inspired, and that he does not get disheartened by ill-intentioned criticism». Abdou, Muslim from Algeria

«The Pope’s renunciation concerns us all. But nothing will change the things we have at heart. He has continued John Paul II’s work, and there is no way back. On the contrary, we go further ahead in mutual understanding and collaboration ». Enrique, Jewish, from Uruguay

«I think that (the announcement of Benedict XVI’s resignation) constitutes a very important precedent. I appreciated the Pope’s humility and his sincere allusions to the causes of his resignation, and the difficulties in the Vatican curia. With his decision I feel (I hope) that he has paved the way for an increased collegiality in the Church. What do I wish the next pope? Courage! He will have to bear a heavy cross, but he will be able to and have to share it more with his people». Armando, Italian with non religious convictions.

«We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw Benedict XVI announcing his resignation. Then we were filled with a deep understanding and sympathy for him. Not even a Pope can escape human limitations! Joseph Ratzinger had the courage and sincerity to publicly acknowledge this. Our wishes for the future pope is that he continue along the path of openness towards other Christian denominations, towards other religious traditions, as well as people of different convictions». Donika and Luan, Tirana – Albania

«I think that he has taken a wise decision, though certainly not an easy one! Even this is an act of responsibility. I would like to thank him for all that he has given us. What I expect from the next Pope is that he may have always this consideration for brotherhood, this openness towards the other creeds, religious traditions, to build a world of universal brotherhood». Racim, Muslim from Algeria

Legal Adoption for Detained Citizens

Feb 23, 2013 | Non categorizzato

Five hundred prisoners have benefited from the project that has re-opened 300 court cases. These are prisoners who would otherwise still be awaiting trial and burdening the prison system.
Three hundred law students took part in the project.
Three hundred and fifty families of the prisoners we assisted by the students, health care workers and social workers.
More than 200 citizens were redeemed through the project.
More than 1000 prisoners have benefited from assistance through clothing drives, toy drives and toiletries.
Articles, essays and awards

These are only some of the results (between 2001 and 2012) from the Legal Adoption of Arrested Citizens project and presented by Professor meeting organised by CeD Fraternity, Law and Social Change at Mariapolis Ginetta (January 25-27, 2013). This project seeks to face issues related to the penitentiary system in the State of Pernambuco, as they regard detainees – awaiting a court hearing – who should be assisted by Public Defense agencies.

These are real life stories of legal abandonment, of people without defense, but especially in need of a hopeful and noticing glance. One of the project’s constant challenges is to draw students to this situation, especially since the “adopted” prisoners have committed or attempted to commit serious crimes. Taking brotherhood as a political and legal principle to be taken into consideration, how would the law worker then operate?

Starting from an academic look at the professional humanization of law, and encounter takes place: the prisoner finds the way of having his or her human rights respected, which are often being violated (with overcrowding, for example, where 1,400 people are living in a space that was meant for 98); future professionals develop their critical sense and become aware of their power to change society. But above all a fraternal dimension is established between student and detainee, one that permits both to experience citizenship in all it fullness as this fraternity is joined to freedom and equality.

The Legal Adoption for Detainees Project began in 2001 as a result of an agreement between the ASCES School, the Tribunal Court of the State of Pernambuco and the State Secretary for Citizenship and Justice. Brotherhood was gradually considered to also be a pedagogical principle in the training of law students. The research group prepares students for accompanying a case before a jury with lessons on theory and technique. The methodology involves interviews with the detainees, their families and raises awareness in schools through the use of media.

Moving from assistance of prison populations to a debate on fraternity, you begin to see how human rights and fraternity are closely linked because of basic democratic values, but especially for spreading a culture of peace. These eleven years of work demonstrate that it is possible to create a system for the protection of human, social and legal rights of detainees by working for the distribution of goods produced by social collaboration.

¨Enculturation¨ experiences

Feb 22, 2013 | Non categorizzato

From the 10^th to the 13^th May 2013, the little town of ¨Piero” in Nairobi (Kenya) will host the ¨Enculturation School¨, a workshop that this year will have as the main theme ¨The Person” in various African traditions. Besides, a group of young people will take part in the first stage of the Project “Sharing with Africa”. In preparation for this event, we publish Giulia´s account of her Ugandan experience.

«Malpensa Airport, 2^nd August 2011: destination “Kampala – Uganda”. I felt extremely excited although I still couldn’t imagine that in the coming four weeks I would have one of the most beautiful and important experiences of my life. For a month I lived together and shared daily life with another Italian girl and three Ugandans. This obliged me from the very beginning to put aside all my ¨western¨ habits, every way of doing or thinking, in order to be open myself to them and their life. But what at first were just small sacrifices, soon became a treasure, a new way of thinking and relating to people around me.

I was touched by the African concept of person. For them, the person, the other, is at the centre of each event and action, and not time, doing things in a hurry, commitments. Therefore, for instance, a meeting will start when everyone is there, and not simply when the clock says its time, or buses will leave when they’re full and everyone’s on board, and not at a given scheduled time. “How can you westerners base your daily life on the flow of time, when it does not belong to you and you cannot control it in any way?” It’s a question that still echoes in my mind when, overwhelmed by the frantic rhythm of my daily routine, I risk to become indifferent to those around me.

A typical concept in Sub-Saharan Africa is “Ubuntu”, an expression that could be translated as “I am what I am because of what we are all together”. Nelson Mandela explained it as follows: “Ubuntu does not mean to forget ourselves; rather it means to ask ourselves: do I want to help the community around me to become better?” How wise these words are! And they are not mere words, but real life, daily life lived from the viewpoint of the “we” and not only of the “I”. Everything is shared, everything is done together, the neighbours´ children are like your own, and even a complete stranger who happens to knocks on your door by mistake, immediately becomes a part of the family.

I will never forget the emotion I felt when I was invited for lunch to one of my flatmates home: a house without a toilet, in a neighbourhood not very different from a slum. But the table was set and the food abundant, because no sacrifice is too big when you invite your daughter’s friends for lunch. Hospitality, reciprocity and sharing with the other are more important than anything else.

I left Uganda feeling richer than before. For weeks I was the foreigner, with a different skin colour, a different language, different habits. But I had always been welcomed, I always found a smile and an open hand, and I never felt discriminated, or out of place.

Now, when I meet on the streets many immigrants who live in my city, I look at them with new eyes: I try to put myself in their shoes. This portion of Africa that every day disembarks in Europe deserves that same, huge welcome that I, a foreigner and a white, had received in Uganda in the first place. It’s made up of sharing, of reciprocity, of Ubuntu; it’s something that goes far beyond simple respect for those who are “different”. Different, from whom? A few hours of flight and the “different” one is you, and you realize that we are much more similar than what we may think ».

Economy of Communion: Mission in Serbia

Feb 21, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

It was a real and proper ‘EoC Mission’ the one held in Serbia, in the region of Vojvodina and Belgrade, the first few days of February. The aim of the mission was to get to know up close the entrepreneurs and the families involved in the Economy of Communion in Serbia.

The EoC in Serbia is concentrated in the region of Vojvodina, and is not made up of great numbers but rather of varied experiences representing a society where the local communities suffer unemployment, scarce agricultural productivity and lack of services. It is composed mainly of artisans who, since the beginning of the EoC, have shared their profits, and who now must innovate their production, young people who intend to start up workshops, stores, farming initiatives which collaborate in the production of feed, and who give the product to the poor since they cannot give profit, entrepreneurs who have in common the choice of giving part of their profits the the EoC project, even while using different business strategies among them (the little business that gives credit to clients based on a relationship of trust rather than on interest, the biggest society trying to conciliate a dimensional growth with attention to the local community and to maintaining the number of jobs; a company director who, while not the owner, administers according to EoC principles.)

The beneficiaries of aid given: Other significant moments of the trip were the meetings with some of the realities that benefit from help coming from EoC initiatives: a meal service for children, families, and the elderly; a Caritas centre that organizes entertainment activities for both young and old. It is mostly young families who make themselves available to tell us their experiences: some of them are unable to pay for their children’s education; elderly people who cannot afford medical care; a husband and wife who live in a small house made of recovered materials, in extreme conditions of misery, yet at the same time with great dignity and openness towards their neighbours.

What is the contribution of the EoC in Serbia today – it is very clear that the economic model founded on the culture of giving continues to attract and to propose itself as a valid solution, up to making one rethink the socio-economic system from its very base; the awareness is very strong even for the EoC that today it is fundamental to be able to innovate and to anticipate changes (for the Balkan countries, the cost they will be carrying, as well as the prospects of development is emblematic for a future integration into the European Union).The role of the new generations will be fundamental in this process, of young people attracted by the EoC Ideal and competent not only on matters of health and work security, environment, marketing, project administration, and accounting, but also in the guidelines for conducting an EoC business, (studied and developed in detail referring to specific local and business contexts) that could offer entrepreneurs a concrete contribution both at the local level (Serbia could be representative of an important experimentation in this sense) and at the level of the International Commission. To form 3-5 young people, already locally identified who have these competencies is the proposal with which the mission concluded: this will be a way to create jobs for some youth who will be entering the EoC reality and businesses that will necessitate consultations in order to innovate, both on a general and a specific level, will also be helped.

Finally, a very important moment of dialogue with the Serbian Orthodox Community took place, in particular with the Institute for the study of Dialogue between Culture and Christianity in the person of BojanaBursac: from this encounter it is probable that in a not too distant future there might be a meeting between the EoC and Serbia’s orthodox. New frontiers of dialogue can be seen on the horizon.

With B16 in his final audience

Feb 20, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

This will be a unique occasion for the Focolare Movement to once again express its gratitude and to pray with the Pope and thousands of others who will gather at St. Peter’s, for the Church’s future.

“Your Holiness, the Focolare Movement wishes to be near to you with great gratitude for the fatherly love and support you have always shown it.”

The Focolare wishes to be part of the planetary embrace that has enveloped the Holy Father during these final days of his Pontificate. It wants to be there to express to the Holy Father its closeness in prayer. As the news began to spread at the Vatican Press Office on February 11th, Maria Voce wrote to the Pope on behalf of all the focolarini of the world: “We want you to know that we are at your side, in deep and constant prayer for this new phase that is opening in your life and in the life of the Church with that sure faith in God’s love, which you called us to in a special way this year. We continue to wish you well and we will always love you!”

The announcement of the Pope’s resignation took the world by surprise. Declarations of esteem and support immediately began to arrive praising the Pope’s “humility and courage”. Messages arrived from politicians, Christian and non-Chrisitan leaders, and ordinary people in response to this rather unique gesture in the history of the Church. And all of them expressed the love and consideration that this Pope enjoys at all levels of today’s world.

The president of the Focolare Movement admits that the first reaction was one of “dismay and even pain as the Pope spoke of his declining ‘strengths of both body and spirit, due to an advanced age’. Words spoken so simply and so humbly by the Pope that they make him appear all the greater to us precisely in his weakness.” It was because of this sentiment that the focolarini felt urged to send a “message of gratitude” to the Holy Father. But we also saw in this a call of God to a greater unity. Maria Voce explains: “This is our charism and in this moment more than ever we should give witness to it, pulling together in a worldwide renewal of the pact, from one end of the world to the other, so that we can make available to the whole Church the great treasure of Jesus in our midst.”

The Citta Nuova website dedicated a special edition to the Pope’s resignation and received many reactions from its readers. “Many people give their analyses, critical or benevolent acclaim, I simply wish to express my love for Benedict XVI.” “After the initial shock . . . I saw his decision as a confirmation of his greatness.” “I was struck by how the Pope was able to conceal his decision during these months, probably in a deep and ongoing conversation with God. I feel that his experience personally challenges me and has much to teach me.”

With regard to this ongoing conversation with God, theologian Piero Coda, Dean of the Sophia University Institute writes: “Benedict XVI has surprised us from the beginning of his ministry because, with the simplicity and radicalism of the Gospel he talked to us about his relationship with Jesus and the relationship that, in Jesus, we are called to have among ourselves in the most beautiful and intense expressions of our [human] experience: friendship. The unexpected gesture with which he today announced his resignation from the ministry of the Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter the Apostle, is the highest sign of this friendship that he has offered us. It is a high gesture that not only places the seal on his extraordinary Pontificate, but one that opens a new stage in the way of understanding and adminstrating the ministry of the papacy.”