Every life bears hope within. Even in the dark tunnel of addiction a light can still shine. In 1983 in the city of Guaratinguetá, in the State of Sao Paolo (Brazil), Nelson Giovanelli, encouraged by Fr. Han Stepel, a German Franciscan friar, approached a group of drug addicts. The young Nelson won their trust and one of them, Antonio Eleuterio, asked him for help to be able to get out of the drug ring. Those were the first steps of the big Fazenda da Esperança family. In 1989, Iraci Leite and Lucilene Rosendo, two girls of the same parish, following Nelson’s example, left everything to dedicate themselves totally to this new mission. In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI visited the Pedrinhas community in Brazil, at the Aparecida shrine. Since then the Fazenda da Esperança’s mission has spread worldwide. The operators of the current 118 Fazendas diffused in 17 nations are volunteers, often with a background of drug and alcohol addiction, and who, after rehabilitation, felt God’s calling to become in turn, harbingers of hope for those who have plunged into the same dark pit. In the first days of May 2017, 60 volunteers of various Fazendas of the world went to Assisi, the city of St. Francis and St. Claire, and to Loppiano (Italy), to start a new “hope mission” through the roads of Europe. For two weeks, they were accompanied also by the international band, Gen Rosso. Germany, end of May. Some members of the band recount: “every morning, a caravan of cars and minibuses set out for a new destination, within an area of 400 kilometres: schools, communities, groups, and jailhouses. The boys and girls of the Fazenda share their past experiences, triggering and answering the question they are posed. Above all they light up hope: if they were able to make it, why can’t I do the same? These are stories of drugs, desperation, solitude, fear, crime, and jails. When the darkness becomes absolute, a light shines out: God loves me, just as I am, in the conditions I have reduced myself to. What do they hold on to, in order to be reborn? It is to the “Word of life,” and mutual love, the daily nutriment to get up on one’s feet and start again. An explosive message which flies to the sound of words, and also to the rhythm of music and dance steps, increasingly involving all. At first, all this generates simple curiosity and moments of doubt. Then the uncertainty melts away and smiles appear on the faces of many of the youths, up to when a heartfelt exchange of ideas occurs. Also today, the message of hope has pierced the hearts of many.” The tour Every Life Has Hope has travelled kilometres across various cities and regions, testifying to the presence of God in society today, and the chance for all, nobody excluded, to start again. In the jail of Bielefeld, the “caravan” encountered a hundred prisoners, and in Arnsberg, in north Germany, the members of the Shalom movement On Pentecost day in Koln, there was a stopover in a parish community, and in the afternoon, a meeting with the Caritas was held. Invited by the Auxiliary Bishop, the band sang the mass in the Cathedral, offering the song “I was there,” composed specifically for that occasion. In Gut Hange there were celebrations for the first five years of the opening of a women’s Fazenda. Furthermore, there were visits to homes for wayward tramps and terminally ill people, and meetings with students and drug addicts hosted in a public structure, with a congregation of nuns who dedicate their lives to accommodating girls with serious problems. The tour also made a stopover in Belgium at the community in Peer, a town that will soon open a new Fazenda. After two intense and joyful weeks, the Fazenda group will proceed to Berlin and Poland, while Gen Rosso will return to Loppiano to prepare for their next tour with the musical “Campus” in Apulia (southern Italy), where there will be the inauguration of a new Fazenda. Once again, together, they will light up new hope.