experience Truly Useful to the Human Companionship Christianity is all one with a Fact you experience, and not with an ideology. For fifty years, the life of the Movement has been the witness of people who are not ashamed of Christ, to say who Christ is. For this reason, they create occasions of friendship and of hope for all, everywhere, enhancing what is true, beautiful, good, and just in everyone by Giorgio Vittadini Truly useful to the human companionship: from the first day, the good news of Christianity has meant a different and more human way of acting. The first deacons, such as Saint Stephen, served in distributing food for the widows, who at the time were the society’s most defenseless. Thus, in profound analogy with the life of the Church, those who encountered the charism carried by the CL Movement brought a more human way of living man’s problems. Student Youth (GS) affirmed itself early in the schools of Milan and soon gave life to the first battle for democracy, not for itself, but for the minorities who risked exclusion from student representative bodies, as was happening for the Jewish students. During the Cold War years, with their ideological polarization, GS started, in the Berchet High School classrooms, a new way of understanding democracy, overcoming the logic of rigid side-taking, encouraging everyone to engage his own deepest questions, in comparison with reality. These first battles for true freedom of expression and democracy were prophetic of the Movement’s life over these past fifty years. Here are three examples. Many Italian figures, among them Andreotti and Cossiga, have repeatedly affirmed that the Movement’s attempts to be a public presence in the universities in the 1970s–with university assemblies, participation in university elections, preparation of the Atlantises (flyers expressing judgments, hung on the walls), and non-violent resistance to spitting, attacks on headquarters, and journalistic calumnies–were fundamental in reviving democracy in our country. Against the new Pharisee-isms Of the same nature in later years was the battle against the new Pharisee-isms that repeatedly tried to divide society between the pure and the impure (from the March of the Honest to the political exploitation of Tangentopoli). The Movement was on the front lines in reminding, with conventions, articles, books, and flyers, that violence is born when, instead of recognizing one’s own personal and social evil, one tries to forget it by constructing ideologies, be they religious or political. Finally, the battle for “More society, less State,” which then became the commitment for subsidiarity (which led in 2001 to the inclusion of the concept of “horizontal subsidiarity” in the Italian Constitution), translated that original battle for freedom into an economic and political principle, directed at fostering social creativity in our society. This principle is defended by the many members of the Movement who have entered politics, serving public life, some in quite important roles (for example, Formigoni, head of the Region of Lombary). This continuous activity for pluralism and democracy is seen in the work of numerous cultural centers and of the Meeting in Rimini, which has become a place for international dialogue, a virtuous example of a possibility for exchange, far different from the yelled dialectic of the talk shows. The outlook on the world This passion for the freedom of all is also the first constant in the Movement’s outlook on the world. During the Cold War, scores of people went to the Soviet Union to meet with famous dissidents and common people. The Meeting and public conferences hosted Tarkovskij, Walesa, and Russian dissidents, friends of Irina Alberti. Russia Cristiana, CSEO, and Jaca Book published their works, including The Power of the Powerless by the future president, Vaclav Havel. In the crucial moments of East-West relations, from the Euromissiles to Solidarnosc, public events did not lack. This same impetus lead us to say our “No to the war, Yes to America” in a commitment against the opposite ideological extremisms of the warlords and of the relativistic pacifists on the human rights of peoples. This passion for freedom, empowered by the faith encountered, has characterized the Movement’s relationship with the entire world. “Living the dimensions of the world” was the title of one of the first GS conferences in 1960. It testified to the certainty that the newness for the world was the new life lived in Christian communities, and that it was to be lived everywhere. Mission in Brazil The first missionaries departed for Brazil with Pigi Bernareggi in the early 1960s. Those who were still left after the crisis of 1968 proposed nothing more than Christian community and its capacity for sharing, culture, and charity. This charity, lived in the favelas of Belo Horizonte, the Congo, or the slums of Uganda, inevitably opened to the dimension of a work as the organic response to the needs of the people, lived according to the criteria given by the experience of the faith: “Weigh every thing and keep what is good.” Thus was born AVSI [Association of Volunteers in International Service], in which Europeans and people from the Third World cooperate for development that is the fruit of a common Christian life. Charitable works for AIDS sufferers in Kampala, a children’s hospital in Bucharest, educational works, big and small schools in Santiago, Nairobi, and Manaus, small businesses in all parts of the world, from a carpentry shop in Nairobi to Team Service (an Italian cleaning service replicated in Chile)… They are small but significant examples of the actuation of Paul VI’s slogan, “The true name of peace is development” and of the new coexistence among peoples foreseen by John Paul II. Examples of living this new and glad protagonism are the young people of the Movement in Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Nigeria. The same passion for life and for true human progress is communicated by the many works born in Italy. The charitable works (such as Crosta’s Solidarity, Food Bank, Families for Hospitality, and CUSL) show how Christian love for the concrete man takes form in the capacity to plan an organic response to his needs. Over 300 schools and thousands of teachers of every level, drawing on the example of the Sacro Cuore Institute of Milan, try to build in Italy a different way of educating and teaching. Thirty thousand businesses associated with the CDO [Companionship of Works], in addition to creating thousands of jobs, exemplify a different conception of business, linked to man’s capacity to generate, his capacity to educate and enhance human capital, and marked by openness to change and innovation. A new culture So it is not by chance that all this activity and, above all, what precedes it–School of Community, a coherent dialogue on life–gives birth to a new culture, a critical and systematic consciousness of an experience in action. The first revision sheets (critical re-readings of scholastic content), the public cultural battles (Galileo, the battles in Catholic University in the 1970s and in the weekly Il Sabato), cultural coordination of the schools, publishing houses, the already-mentioned cultural centers, the Rimini Meeting, the Center for Studies on Ecumenism, the Foundation for Subsidiarity, and the activity of introducing young people to science, through associations such as Euresis and Medicina e Persona, are just a few examples. These original contributions to the life of all are born of an experience of continual search for truth, and of the experience of Christian life. So it is not by chance, then, that this truth is openness to the truth in everyone. This can be seen above all in the United States, where openness to the new, to science, to technology, united with the Movement’s desire to know, has brought many friends into the most advanced nerve centers of the world, from Fermilab to NASA to NIH, bringing Christ where He had been expelled. Affinity with those who search for truth has led to conventions and meetings with other religious expressions. Discussing the books of Fr Giussani, friendships have begun with Protestants such as Archie Spencer and brotherhood has grown with Jews and Orthodox, as has dialogue with Muslims and Buddhists. This is a contribution to an image of man that is truer, more tied to his religious sense. Truly useful to the human companionship.