Traces, no. 5, October 2024

As we face the “icy winds of war,” violence, and emptiness, an “unprecedented anthropological change', it is essential to stop and ask ourselves: is there something worth living and hoping for?” Pope Francis asked this question in the heart of his message to the Meeting of Rimini, and it was later echoed by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in the opening session on building peace within the darkness of history: “The Resurrection is not explained. It is encountered.” The week in Rimini showed everyone women and men who, because of an encounter they have had, bring light to the world. Two such people were Franz and Franziska Jägerstätter, the subjects of one of the most visited exhibits at the Meeting, two simple Austrian farmers whose “hidden” story during the Nazi regime shook consciences then, and now. In the following pages, Fr. Emmanuele Silano recounts the choice of Franz, how God impressed a change onto history through a person filled by an experience of mercy, incarnated first of all in his relationship with his wife.

We look at the testimony of a new culture recounted at the Meeting through guests like Adrien Candiard and the photographer Curran Hatleberg. You will find other interviews on english.clonline.org, as well as the video of the Arena of Traces in celebration of its fifty years, together with the main encounters of the week. The source of a newness of life is what you will find in the stories from three communities of the Movement in very different worlds Australia, Chile and Uganda–where each of the protagonists has encountered “a human love that glowed with something that went beyond, something that showed a different reality,” as Davide Prosperi said to the International Assembly of CL Leaders. “We are called through a human encounter that makes it possible to experience an undeservedly free love for our destiny, for our face.” Those who live this new awareness born of faith “transform the actions they do and the relationships they have; they tend to create, even in an infinitesimal way, something new in the world. Mission is not choosing some activity over of another, but as Fr. Giussani said: “Your life is the mission,” and it brings “the fact of Christ, and thus the fact of Christian communion wherever you go.”