{"id":328054,"date":"2016-03-11T05:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T04:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/argentina-a-community-at-the-outskirts\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:03:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:03:18","slug":"argentina-a-community-at-the-outskirts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/argentina-a-community-at-the-outskirts\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina: a community at the outskirts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"001\"From the <\/strong>Argentinean <\/a>capital, if you take the south bound motorway, <\/strong>after half an hour you would get to Pl\u00e1tanos, a peripheral barrio<\/em> of about 20,000 inhabitants. \u00a0They are hardworking people who have built their own homes with great effort and very little money. The parish<\/a>, dedicated to Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, is very active. Fr. Francesco Ballarini, Italian, brought the Focolare <\/a>spirit there almost 30 years ago. Today, it is the lay people who continue to live this spirit of unity, together with other diocesan parishes. “At the start of the year \u2013 they recounted <\/strong>– we organised a party for the children of the most far out district of Pl\u00e1tanos, the inhabitants of which do not frequent the parish very much. Each of them was invited to put in common their own talents: some taught how to make bread, others how to paint, and there were a ceramics lab, a catechist dad to play magician, and some ladies who taught how to prepare mate<\/em> (the typical infusion drunk in the Southern tip of the country).” On this occasion they met a 15-year-old at the end of her pregnancy. “She needed everything. A solidarity competition started in order to meet the needs of the child who was born a few days early. Upon reaching her house, we were shocked by the downgrade of the small place: without a floor or windows, a broken door, and with her six siblings living there with her parents. When the community heard about this situation, a lot of aid started coming in. We are almost ready to install the windows, doors, a heater and other people have offered to give a hand. Some ladies went to teach M. how to best take care of her baby, and M. who was sad and irritable when we first met her, has started to smile. It is the charity lived all together that works small miracles.” \"003\"<\/a>“Another initiative we are working on \u2013 they continued \u2013 is the Sachetera <\/em>project:<\/strong> it is about the manufacture of sleeping sacks with the milk bags, for the homeless. As a parish we want to continue supporting this project, and even each of us could work in their own homes. We prefer working together: kids, adolescents and adults.\u00a0 During a very rainy day, we thought it would be impossible to meet, but the thought of our homeless friends urged us to work even harder.” “We then gathered at Bernal (another barrio<\/em>) with members of other parishes <\/strong>and the Focolare youth<\/a> who brought ahead the aid project for the needy. For us it is important to share our experiences with other parishes, also so we would not enclose ourselves only in \u201cour\u201d periphery, and instead open out to the others.” In September, the house of a family in a nearby district burned down \u2013 destroying everything<\/strong>, “we started up an action aid, bringing the primary necessities from our own homes. With the communion of goods we contributed to the building of the walls. So with great enthusiasm, they were able to rebuild their house. Only much later, we found out that the family belongs to the Pentecostal church, and that he was the Pastor. We were moved since Love did not consider, once again, one\u2019s religious profession, or other differences.\u00bb\u00a0 In the following days, the Pastor who worked as a mason, offered to plaster the wall of the church which wanted to build an altar for the icon of the Virgin of Luj\u00e1n. \u00abI thank you all for the love you gave me, without asking anything in return \u2013 the Pastor said to the Catholic community gathered for the Sunday mass, and which they wanted to take part in \u2013 you have helped me overcome the prejudices that many of us (Pentecostals) feel towards Catholics. You too are my brothers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The testimonial of the parish community of Santa Isabel de Hungr\u00eda di Pl\u00e1tanos in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, recounts talents and resources placed in common also in favour of the most needy.<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328054","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=328054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}