In his 2022 greeting and message for the Solemnity of St. Francis of Assisi, the Minister General, Friar Carlos TROVARELLI, mentioned a text published by the Conference of the Franciscan Family that offered guidelines for celebrating the 2023-26 centenaries.
That said; let us take this opportunity to remind you where you can find that text and to present you with some resource material prepared by the Coordinating Committee of the Franciscan Family for the Franciscan Centenary.
Coordinating Committee of the Franciscan Family for the Franciscan Centenary
Rome, August 2022
Dear sisters and brothers of the Franciscan Family,
May the Lord give you peace!
We, the Coordinating Committee of the Conference of the Franciscan Family for the Franciscan Centenary, turn to you to continue the dialogue that our six Ministers General began on October 2, 2021. They announced the Centenary and in early May of 2022, issued the guidelines entitled, “A Multifaceted Centenary in Which Several Centenaries Will Be Celebrated (2023-2026).”
As you know, we have translated the text into no less than ten languages. The guidelines present an outline for the celebration of each of the stages of the Centenary. In 2023 we celebrate the Rule and the Christmas at Greccio; in 2024, the Stigmata; in 2025, the Canticle of the Creatures; and in 2026, the Transitus or, perhaps better, the Easter of Francis. This text will be the fundamental aid for the celebration of the Centenary.
Those who have already attempted to read these guidelines have certainly grasped the richness of this proposal. We are now sending you a very brief tool (just two pages) to help you “enter” the guidelines better and grasp the connection and interrelation of the proposed themes at a glance. It is a sort of chart that presents, year by year, the various themes linked to each Centenary, showing their structure, articulated in four fundamental dimensions. It is a simple proposal intended to offer a possible use of the guidelines and thus stimulate creativity.
In this way, we want to invite you once again, if you have not already done so, to read the guidelines, which you can find on the Order’s website: https://www.ofmconv.net/en/centenario-francescano-linee-guida-per-lapprofondimento-carismatico/.
It seems very important and meaningful for all of us, as members of the one Franciscan Family, to retrace together, in the different countries and cultures of the world, the essential stages of the last years of the life of “our” Francis of Assisi.
Those responsible for Communications, Formation, Evangelization and JPIC throughout the various Orders and Institutes of the Franciscan Family have also begun coordinating for the Centenary. Those responsible for Communications are already working on a single Centenary website for the Franciscan Family.
If, at the end of these four years, we can say that we celebrated the centenaries together as a Franciscan Family, we will already have achieved good results in terms of getting to know one another and, above all, being in communion.
May the Lord accompany us on this shared journey and allow us to experience the Centenary as an opportunity to decisively direct our gaze toward the future and charismatically strengthen our Franciscan identity.
Fraternally,
The Coordinating Committee of the Franciscan Family for the Franciscan Centenary
