![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/20110524-01.jpg\")
<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>Rome 1962. (from left) Pasquale Foresi, Igino Giordani, Canon Bernard Pawley and Mrs Margaret Pawley, Chiara Lubich, Eli Folonari <\/p><\/div> On 14th January 1961 Chiara Lubich met with a group of Lutherans in Germany<\/strong> and this encounter led her to realize that the spirituality of unity, which is based on living the Gospel, was not for Catholics only but for all Christians. In May, Chiara met Anglican Canon Bernard Pawley, in Rome who afterwards was an observer at the Second Vatican Council. On 24th May Chiara made a note in her diary: \u201cGod\u2019s will is mutual love. Therefore, to mend this break, it is necessary to love each other.\u201d These were the antecedents that led Chiara to found the Centre \u201cUno\u201d for the unity of Christians in Rome.<\/strong> She appointed Igino Giordani as its director, since he had been working as one of the pioneers of ecumenism ever since 1920. The year 1961 had been a year charged with intuitions. It marked the beginning of a promising ecumenical dialogue based on living the Gospel together. Chiara Lubich, Gabri Fallacara, Fr\u00e8re Roger Schutz (1978).<\/p><\/div> As the years went by, the spirituality of unity drew the interest of Anglicans in Great Britain<\/strong>, and members of the Reformed Church in Switzerland, Holland and Hungary. It was received by members of various Christian churches in Europe and by Eastern Churches in the Middle East, and then by Christians in other continents. Patriarch Athenagoras I became interested in the spirituality of unity and invited Chiara to Istanbul in 1967 and encouraged its spreading in the Orthodox Churches. After 30 years of Focolare\u2019s ecumenical involvement in 1996 another historic step was made in London.<\/strong> While meeting with about a thousand of Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists and Baptists who lived this spirituality of unity, Chiara sensed that a particular style of ecumenical commitment was emerging that was specific to the Movement and born from its\u2019 spirituality: a \u201cdialogue of life\u201d or \u00a0a \u201cdialogue of the people\u201d, which was not in opposition to other forms of dialogue but in support of them. There are now Christians from over 350 Churches in five continents who promote this type of dialogue and witness that it is possible to live in unity with Christ among us. Istanbul, 2010. Participants of the 18th School of Ecumenism promoted by Centro \u201cUno\u201d were received at the Fanar by Patriarch Bartholomew I.<\/p><\/div> The 50th anniversary of\u00a0 Centre \u201cUno\u201d was celebrated in Trent, Italy at the Social Theatre on 12th March <\/strong>with an international ecumenical day entitled: \u201cChiara Lubich: a charism, a life for the unity of Christians\u201d, <\/em>which was part of <\/em>an \u201cEcumenical Week\u201d (11th \u2013 16th March) in Cadine (Trent). It included eyewitness accounts of the early involvement of Chiara and the Movement and of successive developments in Focolare\u2019s ecumenical commitment. Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity<\/strong> said in his message: \u201cThe service and the witness given by Chiara Lubich to the promotion of Christian unity are priceless and precious gifts\u201d <\/em>because \u201cshe has traced trails of light and deeply touched the life paths of many Christians of different generations and of many ecclesial traditions.\u201d<\/em> The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I invited the Focolare spread throughout the world \u201cto foster the \u2018dialogue of life\u2019 among the Christian people, the leaven in the ecumenical Movement,\u201d <\/em>in the knowledge that \u201conly intense spirituality can accelerate the march toward full visible communion through the acceptance of the progress being made in the official dialogues, on the part of an ecumenically prepared populace. <\/em>A message also arrived from Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, \u00a0Secretary General of the World Council of Churches: \u201cWe remember her as a gift of God\u2019s gracious love, inspiring, so many of us with her charisma and her spirituality of unity.\u201d<\/em> Then he recalled her first visit in 1967 in which she laid \u201cthe ground for decades of close collaboration which has benefited the fellowship \u00a0of WCC member Churches\u00a0 in many ways.”<\/em> The Centre \u201cUno\u201d follows Focolare\u2019s ecumenical commitment worldwide through a network of collaborators, promotes \u201cecumenical weeks\u201d and ecumenical formation \u00a0courses. Central Secretariat: Centro \u201cUno\u201d Via della Pedica 44 A 00046 Grottaferrata (Rome), Italy Email:\u00a0 centrouno@focolare.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Centre \u201cUno\u201d (One) celebrates its\u2019 50th anniversary. Chiara Lubich founded the international secretariat for the ecumenical dialogue of the Focolare Movement in 1961 and appointed Igino Giordani as its first director.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292502","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\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>