The first thing Giorgio La Pira did in the morning was to buy the newspaper. Then, back in his office, he would open the Gospel next to the day’s news. For the ‘Saintly Mayor’ of Florence the two texts weren’t distant from each other – in fact the opposite was true. His work was that of applying the Gospel concretely to human and social affairs, with far seeing and creative actions that responded to the questions of the existential peripheries of his city, and then of the whole world. A job that is repeated today in the many social projects that bear his name. One of these, which has just blown out 35 candles on its birthday cake, is the Giorgio La Pira International Student Centre, which on 25th May celebrated its birthday, together with many friends who came for the occasion to the Auditorium in Loppiano. Guided by the journalist Maddalene Maltese, the participants leafed through, as with a family album, the many photographs that tell the story of these years at the service of a vast range of young people. Towards the end of the seventies, in Florence, as in many other parts of Italy, there was a new phenomenon: many foreign students arrived, particularly from Africa, Asia and Latin America. But Italy wasn’t ready for this influx at any level – legislatively, culturally or even on a human level. Inspired by the work of Giorgio La Pira, the Archbishop of Florence Cardinal Benelli intervened and asked Chaira Lubich to give him a hand. A few days later three young men of the Focolare Movement presented themselves to the Cardinal and went to visit the building in the heart of Florence that would begin to welcome these students. The rest is history. The man in charge of the Diocese of Florence today is Mons Giuseppe Betori, and in his address he underlined the prophetic dimension of Cardinal Benelli and Chiara Lubich’s idea, which made the La Pira Centre a beacon in the world of dialogue with diversity, and in particular with the suffering, the last, the forgotten. While the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Florence, Joseph Levi, found in the style of dialogue and reciprocity, the real richness that this experience offers the city and the growth of its social fabric in the spirit of fraternity. The many personal stories collected are a witness to this, like that of Jean Claude Assamoi from the Ivory Coast: “The Centre was a help to me at a difficult time in my life, taking me in together with other students. Later I became a collaborator as a teacher in the field of global education (…) and just like me, many other African students that have followed my path, have moved to other places developing work relationships between their own countries and the ones that have welcomed them which mirror the dialogue and unity which was built in Florence”. The peripheries that La Pira loved, and which today Pope Francis invites us to get to know, are the heart of a prophecy that each day becomes more tangible, up-to-date, fraternal.