{"id":341376,"date":"2012-09-08T04:00:38","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T02:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/benedict-xvi-greets-the-1700-young-people-who-had-attended-genfest-2012\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:07:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:07:31","slug":"benedict-xvi-greets-the-1700-young-people-who-had-attended-genfest-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/benedict-xvi-greets-the-1700-young-people-who-had-attended-genfest-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Benedict XVI greets the 1,700 young people who had attended Genfest 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Watch Telepace TV transmission – The Holy Father’s greeting to the young people<\/p><\/div>\n

There were 1,700 young people from forty-one nations at the Wednesday audience, but they were there representing 12,000 youths who had attended the Genfest<\/strong><\/a> (31 August \u2013 2 September), an international event promoted by the Focolare Movement, entitled \u201cLet\u2019s bridge,\u201d that is, \u201cLet\u2019s build bridges.\u201d During the English language greetings the Pope turned to the young people of the Focolare Movement, appealing to them: \u201cYou have taken to heart Christ\u2019s call to promote unity in human family, by courageously building bridges.\u201d Then the Holy Father added: \u201cTherefore, I encourage you: be strong in your Catholic faith; and let the simple joy, the pure love, and the profound peace that come from the encounter with Jesus, make you radiant witnesses of the Good News before the young people of your own lands. God bless all of you abundantly!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pope had already sent them a message<\/strong><\/a> to them during the Genfest. Now, as he spoke to them in person, the young people returning from Budapest waved the colourful ribbons and scarfs that they had been waving during their march through the streets of Hungary with a flash mob on the Chain Bridge<\/strong><\/a>. At the conclusion of the audience, a small delegation of four youths \u2013 from Mexico, Iraq and Pakistan \u2013 were invited to personally greet the Pope on behalf of the 12,000 young people from the Genfest. They offered Benedict XVI the Genfest CD with songs of the young performers from around the world.<\/p>\n

The Focolare youth are now attending a course at the Mariapolis Centre in Castelgandolfo and in Sassone, Italy, which will conclude on Sunday, 9 September. This course will examine the topic of \u201cfraternity\u201d, which was the theme of the Budapest event. They will also discuss how to bring forward the United World Project that was begun in Budapest. And it will create a permanent international observatory that will look into initiatives and projects that have actually been able to generate an \u201cincrease in fraternity\u201d. The observatory will also promote the \u201ccategory of fraternity\u201d through specific cultural activities. Then they will consider the request to the UN of recognizing the international interest of World Unity Week by confirming and expanding this annual event that has been being held by the Focolare young people \u2013 and others \u2013 for fifteen years with the intention of giving a voice to \u201cuniversal brotherhood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Support the project by signing the online petition at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.unitedworldproject.it\/2\/i_commit_myself_329906.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Watch the video<\/a> of the audience (excerpt from the live coverage at TV di Telepace).<\/p>\n

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We thank our sponsors<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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The “young people of the Genfest” with the Pope at the Vatican\u2019s Paul VI Hall, during the audience of 5 September.<\/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-341376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341376","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=341376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}