{"id":327298,"date":"2015-05-18T05:02:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T03:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/towards-a-new-season-of-the-church-in-italy\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:00:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:00:27","slug":"towards-a-new-season-of-the-church-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/towards-a-new-season-of-the-church-in-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a new season of the Church in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.firenze2015.it\/il-servo-del-signore-e-lumanita-degli-uomini\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-124100 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/logo.png\" alt=\"logo\" width=\"285\" height=\"406\" \/><\/a><\/strong>At the opening session, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, Secretary General of the Italian Episcopal Conference (IEC), declared that<strong> \u00abThe spirit of the Episcopal Conference is to start from those involved,<\/strong>\u00bb underlining how this is also proven by the meeting which saw the participation of all the ecclesial organisations operating in the social fields. <strong>\u00ab<\/strong>The ecclesial congress of November will start in Prato, the ideal periphery of Florence and home to Chinese immigrants, and where the Pope is scheduled to make his pastoral visit.\u00bb  In an interview, Prof. Coda summarised the objective of the two-day work session. <strong>\u00abWe want to reflect and offer our testimonial through the experiences <\/strong>of some dynamic groups of the Church in Italy, that are working in the frontlines of service to the poor and homeless and in creating an open dialogue in all spheres.\u00bb The preparatory meeting delved into the theme on \u201cThe Servant of the Lord and the humanity of mankind\u201d (15-16 May), organized by the Abele Group and their magazine, \u201cIl Regno,\u201d with the cooperation of the Italian Catholic Action, Carits, CNCA and the Networks of Charity and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/chi-siamo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Focolare Movement.<\/a>  \u201cTogether with the others, Piero Coda continued, <strong>these experiences \u00abopen out to all the existential frontiers of society<\/strong>, as Pope Francis says.\u00bb Furthermore, \u00abin <a href=\"http:\/\/w2.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/apost_exhortations\/documents\/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Evangelii Gaudium<\/a>, Pope Francis uses a beautiful expression: we must say \u201c<strong>yes\u201d to all the new relationships generated by Jesus. <\/strong>All the groups involved in this event actualise in various ways, this \u201cyes to new relationships\u201d with the cultural and social divides, marginalisation of all sorts, the world around us, and the home common to all Creation, precisely as an expression of this reality of relationships.\u00bb<strong> <\/strong>  <strong>Maria Voce\u2019s presence underlined the Focolare\u2019s <\/strong>adhesion to this preparatory path which aims above all to highlight the life of those who give all their energy every day to creating this \u201cnew humanism.\u201d  <strong>\u00abThe Church breaks through the confines of the building of religious rites,<\/strong> and in full communion between the clergy and laity, comes closer to present day humanity,\u00bb she affirmed in her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/press\/files\/2015\/05\/20150515MariaVoce_VersoConvNazChiesaItaliana.pdf\">speech. <\/a> This Convention \u00abtargets the start of a new season in the life and mission of the Church in Italy: not only with regard to the pressing need for \u201cpastoral conversion\u201d but also for the role and public conduct of Christians in facing the social, economic and political realities of our country and keeping an open attitude toward Europe and the world.\u00bb  <strong>She then referred to the challenges of pluralism and the need to harmonise the multitude of diversities in the public field.<\/strong> \u00abThis new season stands for the transformation of the world, starting from the radical conversion of our hearts and minds in order to be ready to meet Jesus in each person. God cannot receive us alone, he wants us to go to him with our brethren\u2026 To give the Christian name of fraternity to social relationships means committing ourselves to harmonizing the weft of relationships, recognising our mutual belonging and the bonds of responsibility implied, and orienting personal and collective efforts towards the common good.\u00bb This is why <strong>\u00abwe must give a voice and dignity to those at the periphery, <\/strong>extend the spheres of inclusion, and heal and rebuild the frayed social fabric. It is primarily the youth who wish to give their own contribution. So many initiatives have started up locally, in the heart of numberless fragments of \u201cfraternal\u201d civil life!\u00bb  <strong>As a confirmation of Maria Voce\u2019s words, were the almost 200 members of the Focolare Movement <\/strong>attending the meeting<strong>, and <\/strong>involved in many ways in the ecclesial organisations, and active in various fields: interreligious dialogue<strong>, <\/strong>reception of immigrants<strong>, <\/strong>politics, culture and legality, schooling, and the real opening of worksites for the good of Italy. It is a participation which demonstrates their concrete commitment, together with many other active groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The preparatory phase of the 5th National Ecclesial Congress of Italy to be held in Florence, brought together some ecclesiastic realities that are particularly active in the frontlines of service to the marginalised and all-around dialogue. Also the Focolare\u2019s President, Maria Voce, was invited to speak.<\/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-327298","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\/327298","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=327298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}