{"id":371652,"date":"2025-02-27T09:56:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T08:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/?p=371652"},"modified":"2025-02-28T10:40:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T09:40:30","slug":"dear-pope-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/dear-pope-francis\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Pope Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Pope Francis, you may not remember, but we met on 26th September, 2014, when you received a delegation from the Focolare Movement in a private audience. I was part of it, Luciana Scalacci from Abbadia San Salvatore, representing the non-religious cultures<\/strong> that also have a home in the Focolare. I am one of those people who, as Jesus Moran once told me, “helped Chiara Lubich to open new horizons for the charism of unity”. I am a non-believer who has received a great deal from the Movement. <\/p>\n\n

On that extraordinary day, I had the privilege of exchanging a few words with you that I will never forget and that I recall here:<\/p>\n\n

Luciana<\/strong>: “Your Holiness, when you took office as Bishop of Rome, I wrote you a letter, even though I knew that you probably wouldn\u2019t read it with all the letters you receive, but it was important for me to send you my affection and my best wishes<\/strong>, because Your Holiness, I do not recognize myself in any religious faith, but for more than 20 years I have been part of the Focolare Movement, it gave me back the hope that it is still possible to build a united world<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n\n

Pope<\/strong>: “Pray for me, but you are not a believer, you do not pray, so keep me in your thoughts<\/strong>, a lot, think of me, I need it”.<\/p>\n\n

Luciana<\/strong>: “But Holiness, in my own way I do pray for you<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n\n

Pope<\/strong>: “A secular prayer<\/strong> and you keep me very much in your thoughts, I need it”.<\/p>\n\n

Luciana<\/strong>: “Holiness, stay healthy, with courage, with strength! The Catholic Church and the whole world need you<\/strong>. The Catholic Church needs you. ” <\/p>\n\n

Pope<\/strong>: “Keep me in your thoughts<\/strong> and pray for me in a secular way”.<\/p>\n\n

Now, dear Pope Francis, you are in a hospital bed and I am too. Both of us are facing the fragility of our humanity<\/strong>. I want to assure you that I continue to think about you and pray for you in a secular way. You pray for me in a Christian way. <\/p>\n\n

Luciana Scalacci<\/em>(Source: <\/em>Citt\u00e0 Nuova<\/em><\/a>– Photo: \u00a9VaticanMedia)<\/em><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memories and “secular” prayer of a non-believer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":371646,"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":[2839,2826,3286],"tags":[3672,3349,3621,3196],"class_list":["post-371652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chiesa-2","category-cultura-2","category-testimonianze-di-vita-en","tag-dialogo-con-persone-di-convinzioni-non-religiose-en","tag-notifiche-en","tag-papa-francesco-en","tag-ppg-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371652","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=371652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}