The Meeting, with its final press release, takes stock of 2012 edition, presenting the theme and the title of the next one. It is always exhilarating to begin a new work, but even more so when this work coincides with the decisive issue of life. And...
The figure of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was too impressive not to imagine that his passing on August 31st would have a vast echo; not only in “his” city , but in all the world. But it’s one thing to imagine or predict, and another to see the thousands...
We have often repeated (with Fr. Giussani) that our vacation is “the time of freedom,” because our free time reveals what we really care about most. But now we can substitute one expression with another–again from Fr. Giussani–that is becoming familiar:...
There are days when flipping through the newspapers seems like saying a rosary of Sorrowful Mysteries: the drama in Greece, Europe in a tailspin, the tragedy of the earthquake in Italy, and then the bitter sting of those headlines about "whistleblowers in...
This month’s editorial is the letter that Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, submitted to the prominent daily newspaper la Repubblica, published on May 1st. The letter was written after months of a relentless press...
It was expected to be a historic journey. One does not often see a Pope land in Cuba, one of the last outposts of Communism; the only precedent, with John Paul II, was in 1998. There was great expectation in Mexico, as well, for many reasons, beginning...
Anyone who has been reading Traces for awhile knows that, as Easter (or Christmas) approaches, the cover is dedicated to what Communion and Liberation calls “the poster,” composed of an image with phrases that the Movement propagates everywhere, to tell...
There are 2,000 people in the theater, almost all of them under the age of 25. Another 50,000 are linked by video in the rest of Italy and here and there in the world. Ninety tense, dense minutes pass, from Mozart’s Et incarnatus est, sung live by a...
Certainly, the wave started far away, long before the recession; we have been seeing changes underway for years, increasingly pressing. But if there is a sphere in which the current situation bears heavily, to the point of changing its features and...
At first glance, it takes a lot of courage to say that reality is positive, above all these days, when a wind of serious crisis is blowing strongly and shaking the whole world. This crisis is not limited to finance and economics, as you can read in this...
It’s hard to find a more concrete image: “a bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions.” A bunker, with no openings, no contact with the outside world. Just to think of it is stifling. Yet this is the way...
This year, the Rimini Meeting was impressive, because of the visit of Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Italian Republic, and his hard-hitting speech; because of John Elkann, young President of Fiat, speaking about himself openly with his Chief...
Who knows if we will be available to face the challenge, to avoid filing the words that we so often hear at the beginning of summer under "already heard speeches"–clean, correct, and to be quoted by heart but, still, just words. Father Giussani always...
"Sometimes we have to ask ourselves what it means to have an impact on history. What moves the human person deep within?" Julián Carrón, CL responsible, posed this question–this challenge–at a recent public gathering. The first way to fail to take it...
Three days, just like those that marked the culmination of Holy Week the preceding weekend…. Arrival in Rimini on Friday, return to Rome on Sunday, first for the Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of CL and then the Beatification of John Paul II. They...
In the painful confusion presently surrounding us, only a few things are clear and certain. One of these is that we cannot live on the proceeds of the past any longer. For example, we cannot base our tranquility on political balances consolidated decades...
What do we mean when we say we need to judge? And why is it so urgent, as the Pope points out, that "the intelligence of faith become intelligence of reality"? Let's be quite clear: at times it escapes us. We tend to think of it as something that has...
Six years after his death, FR. LUIGI GIUSSANI goes on generating a people, reaching even those who never knew him personally: a Muslim teacher, a Jewish jurist, an Orthodox theologian, an Anglican pastor, and a journalist. Here is the story of a...
"That Christianity gives joy and breadth is also a thread that runs through my whole life. Ultimately someone who is always only in opposition could probably not endure life at all" (Light of the World, Part 1). These words of Benedict XVI challenge us to...
This month’s editorial is a flyer written by the Spanish CL community after Benedict XVI’s visit to Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona. It speaks of Spain and Gaudí, but holds true for everyone, not only because what the Pope said before the impressive...
Take a look, and say if it isn’t a good sign. You come away surprised from an evening, a meeting with a few friends, or a more impressive event, and find yourself taken up, almost dominated, by an unexpected question that you can’t answer lightly: What...