The first chapter of Disarming Beauty, Julián Carrón’s new book (which has just been released in English, following after the Italian, the Spanish, and Portuguese versions), concludes with words that were said three years ago in reference to the situation...
It has just arrived in bookstores in Italy, with the curious title Una strana compagnia [A Strange Companionship], and a heading that identifies it the first volume in a series with a similarly unusual name: “Christianity Put to the Test.” It is the...
There’s a simple way to understand what it is that the Church brings to the world: just look at what happened when Pope Francis visited Milan. Crowds everywhere, all day long. A million people, according to the counts. And it was a joyful crowd, happy,...
This month’s editorial is a letter written by Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, for the upcoming visit to Milan of Pope Francis. The text was published in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, on March 1,...
There is a place in life where we cannot cheat, not even with ourselves: work. This is not just because we spend most of our time there. As Fr. Giussani always reminded us, our true “I” is seen only as we discover ourselves “in action.” It emerges from an...
If there is one word we hear often these days, it is beginning, a lovely word in and of itself, but at times also a difficult, if not even wearisome one to hear and use, because it concerns not just the year that is starting, but also all the unknowns...
There’s a strong tie between the cover of this issue of Traces–the announcement of the coming of Christmas, in the form of the flyer that CL produces every year to tell the world how decisive that fact is for our lives–and the closing of the Holy Door,...
The day is approaching. In little more than a month, on November 20th, Pope Francis will close the Holy Door. The Year of Mercy will be over, at least in form. But there is nothing greater and truer, nothing that speaks to us better about God, than...
September has come, and almost without realizing it, we come to a fork in the road. We get back to normal life as we return to work, school, and university. Everyday life starts again. If vacations are “the time of freedom,” as Fr. Giussani reminded us,...
How do we experience mercy? Above all, “when have we discovered we need mercy to live?” This question is the theme of the summer vacation for CL communities. It is a pressing question, at the end of such an intense year, marked by terrible events and high...
If there’s a word that can provoke instant disagreement and controversy today, it’s “Europe.” Not only because the Union is tangled in a knot of challenges proving harder and harder to unravel (the influx of migrants, the raising of walls, the risk of ....
This issue’s editorial is the letter written by Fr. Julián Carrón to Communion and Liberation after the audience with Pope Francis on April 14th, and one year after the meeting with the Movement in St. Peter’s square. Dear friends: As you know, on...
There is a portion of the world that we look at rarely, and even then, only sporadically. We do so on particular occasions, for example, when protestors, for or against Lula, filled the streets in Brazil, or when Barack Obama made a historic visit to Cuba...
There is so much arguing in the world and among Christians. People debate, often with vicious intensity. Divisions are formed that last for centuries, each side supported by mounds of good reasons.And suddenly, seemingly insurmountable barriers, fixed as...
That contribution can we Christians make to today’s troubled world? Everyone sees the suffering, and in varied ways it is in everyone’s life. It takes the form of what is happening on the global stage: terrorism, a “world war fought piecemeal,” the...
Dear Editor: It’s becoming more and more common for people to be amazed by simple, human gestures that we hardly pay attention to anymore, since to us they are so automatic and habitual. At a hospitality center for refugees, a volunteer calls a Pakistani...
Many of our readers will have already guessed the inspiration for this cover. Others may not, because they weren’t present and haven’t read the text of that meeting last month (CL’s Beginning Day in Italy), in which Fr. Julián Carrón surprised those...
Those who have had the grace to go at least once to Bethlehem or Nazareth know those places were truly a nothing, just holes and hewn rocks in the desert of places that even back then were periphery, unknown to the world.And yet God chose to become flesh...
It was a historic visit for multiple reasons, and the article found in this issue of Traces captures them well. Amidst the meaningful moments of Pope Francis’s trip to Cuba and the United States, one stood out as particularly touching for mothers and...
An image made its way around in the last month. It was of Aylan, the three-year-old Syrian child who drowned while traveling to the West and was found by a Turkish police officer on the beach in Bodrum. It’s impossible to look at that image without...
At the heart of Laudato Si’, amidst the many important questions that Pope Francis raises, we find one at the foundation of all else: “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” It’s not a...