{"id":326696,"date":"2014-09-25T03:06:45","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T01:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/family-an-endless-resource\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:58:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:58:05","slug":"family-an-endless-resource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/family-an-endless-resource\/","title":{"rendered":"Family, an endless resource"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20140925-01\"Speaking before Bishop Maradiaga,<\/strong> President of Caritas internationalis<\/a>, Bishop Paglia<\/strong> of the Pontifical Council for Families,<\/a> and the 150 participants of the seminar (Rome, 18 September 2014) from various parts of the world, this family from Maddaloni (Caserta – Italy), a town defined as \u201cat risk\u201d \u2013 struck by the painful experience of the loss of their three-month old son – was asked to give their testimonial on how one can rebuild hope and solidarity in families today. Their third son, Giuseppe, in fact, died following the complications <\/b>of a banal flu at the age of only three months. \u00abWhen I got the news I thought I was dreaming<\/b>, and then came a piercing pain and the certainty that we had to live this situation in unity, first of all between Gino and me. In those moments I felt the strong presence of God who, though permitting this suffering, was taking me in his arms. A family with which we were sharing a spiritual journey of faith suggested we spend a period of time in Loppiano<\/a>, a citadel of the Focolari close to Florence.\u00bb For Gino it was different. <\/strong>When <\/strong>Giuseppe died, I felt defrauded not only as a father but also as a doctor whose profession is to heal sick people, whereas I was unable to do anything for my son! There was darkness and pain. But I let Elisa guide me and I accompanied her willingly.\u00bb Immersed in the life of the citadel, \u00abwe felt<\/b> an inner strength growing in us, <\/b>and which transformed <\/b>our pain into Love.<\/b>\u00bb Then two other children were born: \u00abIf we didn\u2019t have the strong certainty that all that had happened, even the loss of Giuseppe, was part of the divine plan of God who loves us, we wouldn\u2019t have had the strength to beget other children.\u00bb With a group of relatives and friends they decided to create a Foundation <\/a>named after Giuseppe, the aim of which is to develop the culture of family custody<\/b> \u00abto respond to the appeal of Chiara Lubich<\/a>, who invited families to empty out the orphanages and give a family to every child.<\/b>\u00bb It \u00abwas not created in remembrance of our son but from the wish to continue living that love we could no longer give him. We wanted the \u201cculture of giving\u201d to be the Foundation\u2019s drive engine.\u00bb Custody consists in the temporary custody of a child in one\u2019s own family, <\/b>for as long as the problems of the child\u2019s original family have not been resolved. In the mid-1990s when the project was launched, it was an avant-garde concept in Italy. It started with the education of the family custodians, (presently about a hundred) giving them the psychological and material support, until the formation of a family-home for children who were abandoned. It was among the first structures of the Campania Region. Since then we operate in cooperation with the local administrations and religious institutions, asking each member of the Foundation for the spirit of custody and service. \u00abWe still remember the first time we were entrusted with a child <\/b>– the Ferraro couple confided – a nine-month-old baby, Adjaratu<\/strong>. The words of the social service director at that time still resound in our hearts, \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine what a dangerous road you are opening!\u201d To tell the truth, we did not encounter any real danger. But there were difficulties and efforts, <\/b>and every time these were overcome in the attempt to live evangelical love in a radical way, which had pushed us to operate and\u00a0 become more visible in these 20 years, with incredible events to confirm our efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In view of the nearing Synod, Caritas internationalis and the Pontificate Council for Families is promoting the seminar “The Family, a resource to overcome the crisis.” It is the story of Elisa and Gino Ferraro, promoters of a foundation that supports children in need.<\/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-326696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326696","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=326696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}