{"id":341580,"date":"2012-12-19T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T06:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/fidelia-and-her-1083-students\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:08:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:08:11","slug":"fidelia-and-her-1083-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/fidelia-and-her-1083-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Fidelia and her 1,083 students"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_76244\" style=\"width: 305px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/55923942\"><img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-76244\" class=\" wp-image-76244  \" style=\"margin-right: 10px;border: 0px none\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/20121219-01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-76244\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Video on VIMEO (Italian only)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>\u201cMy name is Fidelia. I\u2019m Congolese and have been living in Central Africa for four years<\/strong>. I\u2019m the director of a school with 1083 students between the ages of three and eighteen.<\/p>\n<p>I always try to keep the Gospel before me as I carry out my work for the children. How can I live the Gospel with them? I\u2019m always mindful of Jesus\u2019 words: \u2018Whoever welcomes one of these little ones, welcomes me.\u2019 One time I had so much work to do that I closed myself up in my office where I could work in peace.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly a small boy of six years arrived, and I remembered those words of the Gospel regarding the little ones: if you do not convert and become like these little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so I opened the door and the child entered my office telling me that he hadn\u2019t attended school for a week, since his parents separated. \u2018I didn\u2019t want to go with my father or my mother, and so I am staying with my grandmother,\u2019 he told me. Then he continued: \u2018You\u2019ve been always teaching us that we should love everyone, even our enemies. And so I\u2019ve come to ask you: \u2018Can you do something for me?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I asked for his parents\u2019 telephone numbers and was able to speak for a long time with his mother. Then I telephoned his father but neither one of them wanted to forgive the other and accept their mistakes. This went on for some time until after a long conversation they were finally able to reconcile with each other. In fact they wanted to come and stand before me as they asked each other forgiveness. They forgave and were reconciled. Now they\u2019re together again, which is a great joy for me and for their son.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had closed myself in my office in order to finish up some work when a six year old student knocked on the door. I decided to open the door and right away he began pouring out his pain. \u201cCan you help me?\u201d he asked.<\/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-341580","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\/341580","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=341580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}