"Seeking a Path Forward" was the title of the tour through America to present the biography of Fr. Giussani, which concluded a little over a month ago. If you think about it, this title presents the main question facing all of us no matter our...
In the beginning it was an ideal. Then, a kind of miracle. Now it just seems to be a problem. In the eyes of many, the European Union, that unthinkable puzzle of languages and cultures assembled piece by piece, a gift of expectation and hope for 500...
It takes courage to talk about “something to start from.” The world seems so confused, so “liquid” around us, that even thinking we can find firm ground to start from to face the problems surrounding us–both great and small–seems impossible, seems like...
Do we truly believe that the other is “a good for me”? Do we actually recognize this in our daily experience? When we say it again here, repeating a line that our readers have seen often in this magazine, we do not do so in order to articulate...
If there is one thing we cannot allow ourselves in the situation of widespread malaise in which we are immersed, it is a failure to perceived facts that point in the opposite direction. We have these facts right in front of us, at times even enormous ones...
Those who read Traces regularly will be familiar with the extraordinary lesson that Fr. Giussani gave in Varigotti in 1968 to a group of young people of the Péguy Center, not only because the text was published as Page One on the CL website, but also...
In this issue of Traces we are trying to take another step on a journey. In the last month, we asked what makes it possible to generate people able to bear today’s confusion caused by the impact with a frighteningly chaotic reality that at times prompts...
By the time you read this issue of Traces, the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment will already be underway. It is a historic opportunity, because it involves a crucial topic for the Church and the world. Young people are not...
"We want everything” was one of the slogans of the demonstrators in 1968 and became the title of one of the most visited exhibits during this year’s Rimini Meeting. These three words struck many during the week of the Meeting. It is also a cry that...
What makes us happy? What can truly fill the human heart, deep down? This may seem like a hackneyed or even insignificant question compared to other issues that at first sight would seem much bigger, such as politics or the economy. And yet it is a...
What newness does faith bring to the world, to this world? We may take this question for granted, ready with answers that risk becoming formulaic based on distinctive values, different life choices, and an understanding of the human person that is...
Dear friend, what you have in your hands is the new Traces. The changes are substantial, as you can see. We thought this was the right moment to go from the periodical to which you–and we–were accustomed, to a “news magazine” style. The nature of the...
We have our ideas, sometimes even correct ones, perhaps forged over years of observation and in-depth study of things that, at a certain point, in one way or another, we think we “know.” And then we have the facts, those things that continually happen...
Five years have passed since that evening. Just two days into the Conclave, on the heels of the major shock of the previous month when Pope Benedict XVI stepped down, came another exciting event: Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, whom the...
Dear friends, As you know, I had the joy of being received in a private audience with Pope Francis on Friday, February 2nd. My desire was to share with him, the guide of our Christian people, the steps we have taken since our momentous meeting with him...
Realities are more important than ideas” (Evangelii Gaudium, 231). There is no greater challenge to our reason, to our human logic, than a fact, a real event. Let us think of the Jewish people in exile, of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke. When everything...
What makes it possible for 145,000 people (Italians and others, in other parts of the world) to give freely of their time on a Saturday to ask others to donate something to the poor, encountering over and over, millions of times, a very concrete “yes”?...
During the recent tour presenting Disarming Beauty in the United States and Canada, something happened that is worth looking at. In those seven events in eight days, with three thousand miles of flights, in which many different worlds entered into...
This month, you could read the entire message of Traces in just one sidebar. You can find it on page 14 with the story of Catalonia preparing to face the post-referendum chaos. The vote took place before this issue went to press, but we don’t know what...
There was a moment in this year’s Meeting of Rimini that gave form to everything, and thanks be to God, it came right away, at the beginning. It was the message from Pope Francis, sent by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, who also...
The words of Fr. Giussani that follow are always new, even if we have already heard them, because they get you where it hurts, a provocation that appears when summer comes and our lives ease up a bit from fixed commitments, obligations, and work. “The...