“The Word is a gift. The other is a gift,” is the theme of Pope Francis’ 2017 Lenten Message, which will be presented in the Vatican and published next Tuesday, February 7, 2017.
It will be presented to the press by Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Congregation for the Integral Development of Human Services, and by a Chiara Amirante, laywoman and founder of the Italian “New Horizons” Community.
The document will be available on Zenit in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic at midday this Tuesday. The Vatican will also publish a version in Polish.
Lent, during which the baptized prepare for Easter and catechumens for Baptism, begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 1 and ends on Easter Sunday, April 16.
The New Horizons Community proposes a life in community and a Christian formation; it also receives young people in difficulty in view of their reinsertion. The Community also shines thanks to the “Knights of the Light” (500,000 people) and the “Friends” of New Horizons (six million people).
Young people are helped or help in 210 centers, and five “Heavenly Citadels,” small villages in which they experience hospitality or are formed in the reception of listening to those in difficulty to help them, and to be able to “color hells with Heaven,” thanks to 973 “Service Teams.”
In a video, on the Community’s Facebook profile, Chiara Amirante explains its birth in Italian and English. “Love is stronger,” says Chiara Amirante, in face of “people of the night,” young people lost in the nights of cities.
Translation by Virginia FORRESTER
