Throughout 2017, various events and initiatives will take place in many countries of the world. Their aim will be to highlight the anthropological and universal value of the family from the perspective of “universal brotherhood” and to give witness to the wealth of cultural and social diversity embodied, through the ideal of unity, in family life.

The main event will take place in Loppiano from 10 to 12 March 2017. We expect to welcome around 800 people from all over the world. They will have the possibility to take full part in many different aspects of the life of this international Focolare citadel and so witness to Chiara’s dream, which is spanning all continents.

The morning program will include workshops for adults, teens and young children, in collaboration with the Parish Movement, the gen3 and Gen4 Centres, AFN onlus and AMU. In the afternoon meetings will take place at the Auditorium with live streaming of talks given by experts who will be taking part in a Seminar (10-11 March), organized by Sophia University, on issues related to family. We hope that from this Seminar, a “Study Centre on the Family”, can be established, with the aim of deepening the contribution the spirituality of unity can make to confront the many challenges the family faces today.

The following three themes have been proposed for an in depth study:

• “Family: a net of relationships starting from me to us”. (Relationships of the couple, with their children, between generations).

• “Love: the means and the response in addressing critical issues in the family”. (Wounds, challenges, sorrows: facts of life found along a shared path).
• “Family: creative resource for the social fabric of every people”. (Life, family networks, solidarity and hospitality, social commitment and work).

Fifty years since its foundation, the New Families Movement is renewing its image with a new logo, in continuity and natural evolution of the previous one. It is a small tree, growing as a sign of the little plant of the previous logo, which over the years has born fruit of life donated to families throughout the world, to the Church and to humanity. Hospitality has been the seed from which all this was born. The family, in fact, opening itself to the other, helps to generate and grow seeds of brotherhood and peace, and becomes a bud of a new society.

Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement (1920-2008), has always paid a special attention to the family and, with the precious contribution of Igino Giordani, an Italian writer, politician and first married focolarino, has stressed “it’s daring, beautiful and demanding role”, seeing in it “a fundamental element for building a world of peace.”

In 1967 she founded the New Families Movement to keep love and those typical values of the family so necessary to humanity, always alight in homes. She could see families as the privileged place from where to reach young people, those who are preparing for marriage, families in difficulty, the separated, people living in widowhood, abandoned children and people who have been, in different ways, marginalized
Giovanna Pieroni

For information
New Family
famiglienuove@focolare.org
tel. 0039 069411565