Celebrative context

We are getting ready to celebrate the Eighth Centenary of the foundation of the Order of Friars Minor and of its historical development in the most diverse cultural situations.

Francis of Assisi, in his journey of conversion, tells us that the Lord Himself led him among the lepers and he showed mercy to them. It was the Spirit of the Lord, then, which moved him to share his life with them and not some philanthropic desire or a simple sociological curiosity and much less a political alliance.

Lepers in the time of Francis, as we know, constituted the most significant group of excluded as they were deprived of all fundamental rights on various levels: the social, cultural, political, economic and even the religious.

The Friars Minor, during the eight hundred years of their history, have always been with the “lepers” of each era and region in different forms of understanding and commitment. They have shared their life in a simple and joyful way with them and, together with them, have developed different types of action oriented always towards the recovery of their dignity as sons and daughters of God.

Faithful to this centuries-old tradition, our recent General Chapters have asked us to renew our commitment to closeness with the poor, especially with those who are in the places of break-down, with those who, today also, continue to be excluded from the most elementary rights to a life of dignity by a society which marginalises them because they do not come within their categories of political, economic, cultural, technological, etc. globalisation.

Objectives

The II International Congress of JPIC proposes:

* To help the Animators of JPIC in the Entities to become aware, on the basis of their own experience and reflection, of the different processes of exclusion found in present-day society and of their multiple forms of expression;

* To reflect together and to identify the most suitable forms of accompaniment, in accordance with our form of life and in communion with the Church, of the poor in their process of recuperation of their fundamental rights and;

*to point out lines of action for carrying out concrete projects in collaboration with other organisms of the Order, of the Franciscan family, of the Church and of Society.

The spirit in which we wish to live the Congress

* Giving more importance to experience of life than to presentations of speakers. The reflection should spring from the life of each participant in the light of Franciscan spirituality incarnated in the present social contexts.

* Living a powerful and prophetic moment by allowing ourselves to be questioned by the Gospel in order to overcome every form of its domestication.

* Creating an ambience of cultural exchange which could help us to appreciate the richness of the diversity of each participant and of the regions from which they come.

* Favouring, during the Congress, space for ongoing formation through an exchange of the diverse forms of animation of the Friars, from the service of JPIC, as a fundamental dimension of our charism of Friars Minor.

* Strengthening the values of fraternal meetings, of communion, of participation, of gratitude and of simplicity.

* Offering, in the celebrative spirit of the eighth centenary, a significant and prophetic contribution to the Extraordinary General Chapter with the aim that the Friars should continue to embrace today's excluded.

* Moving forward the process of reflection on the establishment, consolidation and influence of JPIC in the entire Order, initiated in the First International Congress and developed in the Continental Congresses and in the International Councils.
Financing the Congress