The head of the Roman Church, Pope Francis, met the head –and recently re-elected leader of the Focolare Movement Maria Voce– today at the Vatican. Dozens of people have been gathering these last weeks in Italy for a congress. The Holy Father met and address the Focolare members where he said, among other things, “faithful to the charism from which it was born and by which it is nurtured, the Focolare Movement now finds itself faced with the same task that awaits the Church as a whole: offering, with responsibility and creativity, its special contribution to this new season of evangelization.”
Tag: Maria Voce
Ecclesial Movements impact Synod of Bishops on Evangelization
By now you ought to see a significant theme in the work of Communio, both on this blog and as a way of being in the Church: it is as Dom Luigi Gioia, OSB Oliv., has said about this theological point, “To describe the whole Church, as well as each Christian community, as a communio before speaking of ‘body,’ or ‘society,’ or ‘institution,’ -terms which have of course their share of truth- is knowingly to make charity the essential element of a Christian community, the condition sine qua non of its existence, its raison d’être.” Charity has as its essential element of extroversion the living and sharing of the truth of the faith received by us from the Trinitarian life of God. Faith is a lens by which we live, it is not a pious statement of what we supposedly believe about God. The sharing of faith, this sharing of charity and faith in a communio, is the heart of evangelization.
Categories being what they are, are helpful in seeing the division of labor and thinking. This is no less is the true for the Thirteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, 7 to 28 October, discussing “The new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith.”
The leaders from the various ecclesial movements are worth noting because the vital presence they and the movements they represent have in the life of the Church:
- Br. Enzo Bianchi, prior of the Monastero of Bose (Italy)
- Maria Voce (Italy), president of the Focolari Movement
- Marco Impagliazzo (Italy), president of the Sant’Egidio Community
- Lydia Jimenez Gonzalez (Spain), director general of the “Cruzadas de Santa Maria” Secular Institute
- Francisco Jose Gomez Arguello Wirtz (Spain), co-founder of the Neo-Catechumenal Way
- Chiara Amirante, founder and president of the New Horizons Community (Italy)
- Florence De Leyritz, member of the Alpha France Association (France)
- Marc De Leyritz, president of the Alpha France Association (France)
- *Father Julián Carrón, the President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation might be counted here, too, but he actually is listed by the Holy See among the bishops.