{"id":327136,"date":"2015-03-11T05:08:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T04:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/brazil-violent-neighbourhoods-and-the-power-of-love\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:59:49","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:59:49","slug":"brazil-violent-neighbourhoods-and-the-power-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/brazil-violent-neighbourhoods-and-the-power-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil: Violent neighbourhoods and the power of love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20150311-01\"<\/a><\/strong>\u201cYesterday a man was shot 13 times.\u201d <\/strong>This is what the first person who opened the door of his home to several young people who, on the weekend of February 20-22 always presented themselves to him with a smile. We are on the peripheries of Juiz de Fora, a deprived neighbourhood in the State of Minas Gerais (Brazil<\/a>). After a few hours that same person said to those young people: \u201cWhereas yesterday we experienced terror, today we feel only love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those young people were from the <\/strong>Focolare<\/a>, Charismatic Renewal, and Shalom Community \u2013 <\/strong>parish \u00a0<\/strong>youth \u2013 a hundred in all. In just over a year they have visited ten cities and met some 5,000 families with whom they shared sorrows and joys, courageously announcing to them that God loves them immeasurably. The people expressed joy for their presence: priests are few and do not manage to reach everyone who is in need. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt all began during World Youth Day 2013 <\/strong>and the meeting of millions of young people with the Pope on Copacabana beach,\u201d the Gen from Minas Gerais recount. \u201cDuring the final Mass, a girl in our group began to feel the central message of World Youth Day quite strongly: \u201cGo out and make disciples of all the peoples.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the return trip to Juiz de Fora, Leticia <\/strong>\u2013 that\u2019s the girls name \u2013 shared what she had felt with the other Gen and, together they decided that it would be an opportunity to speak with their archbishop, Don Gil Ant\u00f4nio Moreira.<\/p>\n

Leticia went to visit him with the encouragement of her friends. <\/strong>The archbishop had already prayed that WYD would not only remain a great memory, but that the intense experience shared by so many young people from around the world might continue in some way.<\/p>\n

\"20150311-02\"<\/a><\/strong>That is how the \u201cYoung Continental Missionaries\u201d project began, <\/strong>a name proposed by the archbishop, with the goal of launching young people to reach out to others, to be a living Church that \u201cgoes out, together and prepared.\u201d These three words are the three main points of the project: mission, prayer, formation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just great to go together, young people from different parishes and Movements, <\/strong>but like brothers and sisters,\u201d Vinicius explains, \u201crespecting each other\u2019s diversity in the way of praying and talking in intimacy with God. Also quite important is the dialogue that is generated with several families from other religions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into the homes of the people,\u201d <\/strong>Ana Paula adds, \u201cmany open their doors to us and invite us in, and we discover the most beautiful treasures, as when we visited an Evangelical Christian who had lost her husband only a few days earlier. After we were together for a while she said: \u201cI can no longer be sad, because he\u2019s with the Father in Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cristiano concludes: \u201cWe go into the peripheries of the city never knowing what we will meet <\/strong>but always trusting in God. We feel Him saying to us today: \u201cLove one another as I have loved you.\u201d Then, especially love those who are most in need, even when we are tired or make mistakes. You can always begin again!\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of young people from WYD begins a \u2018mission\u2019 on the peripheries of their own city, Juiz de Fora \u00a0<\/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":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327136","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=327136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}