18 June 2022
General Council Update
Hello everyone, I’m in touch again after quite a while! We came back from Istanbul a little over a week ago. It was an important, and we could even say historic visit, considering that Margaret and Jesús’ met with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, there was the Fifth Halki Summit “Sustaining the Future of the Planet Together” organised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical Chair of Studies at the Sophia University Institute, and also meetings with the local Focolare community. Some video-updates are being prepared and they will be available soon.
Now I want to tell you about the recent General Council meeting held on Saturday, 18th June.
The people responsible for New Humanity and the Inundations told us about a process that began a year ago and which, along the way, has involved Volunteers, Gen, and Youth for a United World with the “Pathways”, together with our NGOs and others. The aim was to listen better and together to the many voices that express the cry of humanity. How did they do this? By networking in order to be ever closer to those who experience systemic suffering and poverty. This path is called Together 4 Humanity, emphasising this particular commitment.
Creative collaboration is already happening in some zones, such as in the DACH zone – made up of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – where an intergenerational group consisting of New Humanity, the Inundations, the Gen, and Youth for a United World is already working within the zone council. In the Inter-American zone, in Brazil and in the Philippines, the secretariats of New Humanity and the Inundations are also working together. These are examples of creativity, looking for solutions to be able to work in society, according to the cultural characteristics of a given territory.
Maria Celeste Mancuso, co-responsible for New Humanity, highlighted the challenge and newness of this path: ‘From the very beginning we understood that our way of relating to one other had to be the one Chiara taught us, that is, with mutual love and recognition, so that two or more realities can each contain the other without being confused, maintaining their own identity and the fullness of their existence.
United World Week 2022 took place along the same lines and some of the Gen updated the Council about it. Being better rooted locally and a greater collaboration between generations are the points that characterised the hundreds of local actions and international events. Work is already underway for the next UWW, which will gather and increasingly represent the Movement’s global commitment to social issues and a united world.
The Councillors for the Violet took stock of the international calendar of events after a year of work. There have been many technical challenges given the type of events (online or mixed, i.e., conducted partly in person and partly via streaming). There have been financial challenges too, given the high costs of specialised technicians, without forgetting the assessment of the impact of these events in the zones. The criteria of feasibility and real need must increasingly be considered when deciding whether or not to hold an event as well as the need to discuss this in depth with the zones.
At the end of the day’s work, Margaret thanked everyone for the past year lived together. Here is what she said: “It has certainly been a challenging year that has asked a lot of each of us. It seems to me that it has triggered a process of growth in communion among everyone, even in the most difficult things we have experienced, because we have tried to live them together.
I hope you will all have a good holiday, those who have holidays now: I hope they will be restful and regenerating. Let’s be grateful to God for all the moments, whether beautiful or less beautiful, whether painful or joyful, which have certainly been an opportunity to grow also in the awareness of the greatness of the charism”. End quote.
She then a writing of Chiara’s, taken from one of her diaries from 1967 (attached). Chiara speaks of the ‘perfection of charity’ and says that if we live it, we develop all the virtues.
So let us make Margaret’s final wish our own: we hope that when we next meet, we will be enriched with the virtues of charity, and be instruments in God’s hands.
