{"id":306810,"date":"2019-03-01T22:02:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T21:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/dialogue-and-forging-relationships\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:39:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:39:01","slug":"dialogue-and-forging-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/dialogue-and-forging-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Dialogue and forging relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u00a0\u201cA life for unity\u201d: with this headline, the Sch\u00f6nstatt Movement announced the death of Fr Michael Johannes Marmann, their former Superior General, on the evening of 26 February 2019, at the age of 81. He has long been a key figure for this apostolic movement which had its beginnings in Germany in 1912.<\/em>  Michael Johannes Marmann was born in 1937 in Berlin, Germany, the oldest of three brothers. He studied Philosophy and Theology and was ordained in 1963 in Cologne. He then continued his studies in Tubinga and Ratisbona. Interestingly, in 1973 he completed his doctorate under the tutelage of a certain Professor Josef Ratzinger, who never lost contact with his student, even after becoming Pope Benedict. They continued to meet every year \u2013 often in recent years at the Focolare Mariapolis Centre in Castelgandolfo \u2013 to discuss current theological issues.  At the time of his priestly ordination, Fr Marmann learned about the Sch\u00f6nstatt Movement and its founder, Fr Josef Kentenich, who at that time was living in exile in Milwaukee (USA) at the request of the ecclesial authorities. After a personal meeting with him, Fr Marmann decided to enter the Secular Institute of Sch\u00f6nstatt Fathers. He was appointed as a spiritual director for youth, and was later involved in pastoral work for priests, families and mothers. From 1983 to 1991 he was responsible for the Movement in Germany. In 1990 the Sch\u00f6nstatt Fathers elected him as their Superior General and Moderator of the Presiding Council.  Fr Marmann\u2019s service in these roles was characterized by his great openness to dialogue and his dedication to the quality of relationships both within the Movement and beyond. His commitment to strengthening the unity of the large and varied work founded by Fr Kentenich, led him naturally towards increased communion with other Movements, firstly within the Church in Germany and then most notably as part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.together4europe.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u201cTogether for Europe\u201d<\/a> network. He was at the heart of those deep friendships and the spiritual unity which developed between representatives of different movements, including Helmut Niklas of YMCA in Munich, Germany, Andrea Riccardi of the Sant\u2019Egidio Community and, of course Chiara Lubich.  In her message of condolence, Maria Voce, Focolare Movement President, recalled the &#8220;significant steps on this journey&#8221;. One\u00a0 of these was the Alliance of love affirmed by Chiara Lubich, Andrea Riccardi and Fr Marmann in 1999 at the Sch\u00f6nstatt Shrine in front of Fr Kentenich&#8217;s tomb. Maria Voce said she was certain that &#8220;Mary, Mother Thrice Admirable, will have accompanied Fr Marmann to the joyful encounter with Christ in his reign of peace&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Joachim Schwind<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"et_pb_slider et_pb_slider_fullwidth_off et_pb_gallery_post_type\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"et_pb_slides\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u201cA life for unity\u201d: with this headline, the Sch\u00f6nstatt Movement announced the death of Fr Michael Johannes Marmann, their former Superior General, on the evening of 26 February 2019, at the age of 81. He has long been a key figure for this apostolic movement which had its beginnings in Germany in 1912.<\/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-306810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306810","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=306810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}