A surprising welcome for Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti in Slovenia where a group of smiling Friulians and Slovenians waited for them with flowers. It was an unusual sight, given that these two peoples have had mutual disagreements since 1918 due to the world wars. The Focolare’s Gospel Ideal has helped them in overcoming the past, and for this reason the atmosphere is warm and festive as the Slovenian people are.

This is a community that has been strengthened by long years of fidelity even through great suffering. A community which Maria Voce noted presented itself “mature” and rooted “in mutual love, that love which links one to the other.”

It is a small people in terms of its territorial expansion, but decisive and concrete in its Gospel experience. The lively youth of this land gathered together 600 of their countrymen, and presented to them the life of Chiara Luce Badano, a Gen who was recently beatified. Another original experience has been the constructive contact with other Catholic movements without which “the Church cannot go forward,” as the recent Archbishiop of Ljubljana pointed out. And it is for the contact with the faithful of other churches and religions.

Faced with a growing secular trend, on the 20^th of June major representatives of the religions in Slovenia signed and launched a public appeal for religious freedom. Thousands of people had previously held public manifestations in defence of family values ​​and against legislation that opposed them. These were projects that involved the community of the Movement in standing up for that “quality in relationships that creates the family, to that Gospel spirit which is a family spirit,” as Maria Voce stated on the last day of her stay in Slovenia.

Skofja Loka

Another significant moment was the August 2 visit of Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti to a noteworthy educational project at the “Sunray” Pre-school in the historic city of Skofja Loka, twenty-five kilometres from the capital. The whole is immersed in green and overlooked by a castle – one of the two-thousands castles to be found in the whole state – the summer residence of the ancient patriarchs of Aquileia.

Twenty-eight teachers – including twenty from the Focolare – have been bringing ahead this educational project since 2003. It involves 120 children between the ages of six months and six years, and is founded upon the spirituality of communion of Chiara Lubich. It is amazing to witness how such a pilot-project, which is born from a Gospel experience, provides a life education based on relationships of mutual love and respect, and of listening and it engages teachers, parents and the children themselves.

Although they do not teach the catechism in the traditional sense, they do present Jesus to the children as someone who was born into the simplicity of a family and as someone who accompanies their growth.

The project has been a large success and more requests are arriving to open similar pre-schools based on the same pedagogical model. Few know the suffering that lies beneath it all, due to the State’s reluctance to support such projects. Maria Voce exhorted the teachers to “write of their extraordinary experience” as she continued to hold up the value of a work that strives to educate children at a relational dimension which is based on the new commandment of Jesus: “This is my command: Love each other as I have loved you.” It was an historical moment for Sunray Pre-school whose very name expresses the sensation one has while visiting there. To the joy of everyone, Maria Voce suggested two “protectors” for the project: two focolarini who showed great love for the youth: Camilla and Vincenzo Folonari.

By our correspondent Mario Dal Bello