{"id":292496,"date":"2011-05-21T06:18:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T04:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/prague-here-you-can-believe\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:03","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:03","slug":"prague-here-you-can-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/prague-here-you-can-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Prague: here you can believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20110521-01\"<\/a> Maria Voce, president of the Focolare Movement, and co-president Giancarlo Faletti<\/strong> were welcomed by an unseasonably warm climate at their arrival from Moscow. And they arrived half an hour early, shortening the waiting time for the thirty people who were at the airport to receive them with applause. Their itinerary would be intense. It included meetings with representatives of the local Church, the archbishop of Prague, Archbishop Dominik Duka, as well as with priests who live the spirituality of communion. There was much expectation among the youths who planned a day meeting at the Mariapolis Centre <\/strong>in Vino\u0159, and among the entire Focolare community all over the country, which would converge in large numbers on Prague. An open meeting was planned to remember the 10th anniversary of the visit of Chiara Lubich<\/strong> to the Czech Republic and the launching of \u201cGolden Prague\u201d, promoted by Chiara herself on that occasion for the implementation of the \u201cnew evangelization\u201d. \"20110521-07\"<\/a>Maria Voce and the small group from Rome were offered hospitality at the small Mariapolis Centre, which was begin over two years, in the heart of the Focolare town which is under construction. \u201cIn 2001, when Chiara Lubich came to Prague,\u201d some of the pioneers tell us, \u201cshe expressed a twofold desire: to provide a house for the family of the Movement and to have a place where people she had met \u2013 members of the political and ecclesial world \u2013 could meet.\u201d Said and done, with much entusiasm and many initiatives, the latest being the \u201cfirst Saturday projects\u201d, which continue until now. Gradually the Mariapolis Centre has taken form and also the little town which is still under construction. Every first Saturday of the month people are invited to come and help in the work, brick by brick, to build a place that is bcoming a centre for the spreading of the spirituality of unity. Ten families have already built their own houses and moved in, others are planning to do the same. Before she left, in 2001, Chiara had buried medals of Our Lady at the various construction sites of the small town which is located in a suburb of Prague. \u201cSome of our neighbors didn\u2019t understand,\u201d report those who were present at the time, \u201cthey thought we were burying money. But with time they came to understand the true sense of what was being born here.\u201d Even people who seemed far from God drew near to us and now somehow belong to the family of the Movement. Oh yes, someone explained, because here it isn\u2019t so much atheism, as much as a type of non-belief<\/strong>, which is the result of non-awareness. The desire to know God hasn\u2019t diminished.  

\"\"<\/a>

The Archbishop of Prage, Msgr Dominik Duka<\/p><\/div> The first official meeting was with the local archbishop, Archbishop Duka, at the Archiepisopal See, from 1344, in Pragues historic district. Next to the Castle, which is partly a museum and partly the office of the President of the Republic, the city is dominated by the gothic cathedral of Saint Vito, the Christian heart not only of the local Church but of the entire country<\/strong>, as the parish priest explained to the group. They received a warm and cordial welcome from the archbishop, who shared a need that he felt to revive popular religosity in the diocese, and also his hope that the anniversary in 2013 of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius (who brought Christianity to the region 1150 years ago) would be a great occasioin for evangelization.\u00a0 <\/strong>   By Aurora Nicosia   [nggallery id=41]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president of the Focolare is continuing her trip in the countries of Eastern Europe. After Moscow, a stop in Prague, where she was a guest at the modern Mariapolis Centre, in the heart of the small Focolare town which is under construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}