Jan 30, 2018 | Non categorizzato
Inspired by our experience of Genfest 1980 , Andrew Basquille, Eugene Murphy and I, all students at University College Dublin at the time, started to dedicate more time to playing music together and entered a period of sustained creativity that resulted in the composition of many songs both individually and collectively. “Yes to You”, the song that we performed at the GenFest in 1985 dates from this time. Here’s how it came to be written. Chiara Lubich visited London in 1981 and most of the Focolare Community in Ireland travelled to Great Britain for the event. One afternoon, as a group of us took lunch together close to the venue where Chiara was speaking, I started to play simple chords on the piano and developed a nice melody using a slightly unusual C / Dm / G progression (on guitar I wouldn’t have naturally played such a sequence). A volunteer, Joe McCarroll, a gifted songwriter in his own right, joined me and sang the lines “So many times that I’ve said maybe” to the emerging melody. I continued with the line “So many times that I said no” and continued with the melody when Andrew joined and completed the lyric which then became the verse. Over the next two days between Andrew and myself we completed about 3 verses but didn’t know where to go for a chorus. This was eventually added – melody and lyric together – by Eugene who stamped his musical sophistication on the song by taking the chorus to Am and then to a beautiful minor / major interplay in E that reflected and emphasised a new level of conviction in the choice – “Yes to you”. We were the asked to perform the song at the Genfest and spend months practising it. On the day we waited patiently for our turn to sing but began to realise that the show was running behind time. Sure enough, we were informed that our intervention had been cut and, bitterly disappointed, I started to pack up my guitar accordingly, months of effort and practice gone down the drain. But then, very suddenly, the decision was reversed and we found ourselves taking our positions on a vast stage without a sound check and unable to make eye contact with each other. I didn’t have time to take my own guitar and was given a Spanish guitar with nylon strings, a type I was not used to playing! So we played “Yes to you” at Genfest 1985 completely out of our comfort zone, forced to depend on the strength of our relationship with each other and our desire to have Jesus in our midst. My experience at Genfest 1985 was one of validation and verification – validation of my choice to live for unity and verification that it was possible. I had many experiences of large scale events – festivals, football matches, concerts – but at Genfest there was no hatred, hostility and enmity like when rival factions meet at soccer games and the fleeting alcohol / drug induced euphoria that’s common at festivals and concerts was replaced by a deeper, more lasting joy.
Padraic Gilligan
Jan 15, 2018 | Non categorizzato
I was born and grew up in Macau, a former Portuguese colony is now part of Continental China, where I got to know the Ideal of unity at a Mariapolis. Macau is a small city that can be visited in few hours, so the invitation to take part in a Genfest in Rome, with thousands of young people from around the world – really appealed to me, even though I didn’t have least idea of what it was. We had just begun to live this ideal of unity, with other young people and a few women focolarini who often came to visit us and bring us the news and the concrete life of the Gospel that is lived in the Movement around the world. That world that I had known only through my geography lessons, but that now, with the Ideal of unity, had become smaller and nearer. Just arrived in Rome, several days earlier, we found ourselves in a house with lots of young people from Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia, Latin America…. How could I live with all of them? We Asians were a bit shy and, not knowing the language, we didn’t know how to communicate. Instead, there was no need to talk in order to understand one another, because we had same joy in common and from the very first, there as a very strong mutual understanding among all of us. After only a couple days, we already felt like we were one family. Then we learned that the title of the Genfest was: For A United World. The Genfest was going to be held at an open stadium, so I remember us praying a lot that it wouldn’t rain. Hundreds of buses from Europe were awaiting us. We learned that Chiara Lubich (whom I had not yet met in person) wanted the Genfest to be a moment of God. More than to the fest, Chiara brought us to the essential.
Chiara Lubich
Jan 1, 2018 | Non categorizzato
The title BEYOND ALL BORDERS intends to highlight the boundaries that need to be overcome at personal and social levels. It was chosen with the purpose of opening the minds and hearts of the participants in the Genfest. This eleventh edition aims to inspire participants to feel capable of building a happier and a united world. To breathe, love, work and live with concern for everyone. This is why the Genfest values artistic manifestations, music, dances, expositions, forums, etc., to enable everyone to think differently and to transform life into something more beautiful.
Dec 14, 2017 | Focolare Worldwide
I was born in Bergamo,(Italy), the first of four children in a beautiful family with solid Christian roots. At seventeen I was in high school and involved in the parish. I loved school, helping others and going on trips to the mountains. I had a lot of friends and a rich faith experience. As they used to say back then, I was “good kid,” but … I always felt something was missing. I wanted something beautiful, great and true. Italy was going through hard times with assassination attempts by the Red Brigades and a job crisis. My father who was in metalworking, was laid off and later lost his job. The injustice of it all bothered me, as did the social conflict, but I also could feel being made to renew society. I spent hours talking with friends, debating, but it only left me empty inside. 
One day, Anita, a girl from the parish, invited me and my sister to the Genfest that was going to be held in Rome. She told me we’d meet thousands of young people from other countries and also the Pope. There was something special about Anita, a special joy and sincerity that shone in her eyes and, like others at the parish – the priest, two catechists and a seminarian – she seemed to have a secret: they were always open to everyone, willing and really able to listen. With a good dose of unawareness my sister and I took off on a bus with a hundred young people from the parish and headed for the Genfest in Rome. We arrived late at the Flaminio Stadium because of an accident and wound up sitting in the last rows on the highest seats where there was no roof – and we were very far from the stage that had a sign that read: For A United World. It was pouring rain, and I was drenched. I began to ask myself why I had ever agreed to such an excursion. But just then some young people from Switzerland who were sitting just below us, offered us some plastic sheeting to cover ourselves with; they offered us some food and binoculars, so we could follow the show more easily. We spoke in different languages, but understood one another right away. I experienced the liberty of love freely given, and a great sense of welcome and acceptance. Despite all the rain, colorful dances took turns on stage. It seemed like I had stepped into another dimension. Forty-thousand young people filled with enthusiasm were flowing in from every corner of the world – all of them giving witness to the Gospel they were really living. 
Then a small woman with white hair got on stage. It was Chiara Lubich. I looked at her through binoculars. As soon as she began to speak a deep silence fell over the crowd. I was enraptured more by the sound of her voice than by what she said, by the conviction that emanated from her words, by their power that stood in contrast to her fragile appearance. She spoke of a “moment of God,” and, even though she presented several lists of divisions, breakups and the overall disunity of the human race – she was proclaiming a great ideal: a united world, Jesus’s own ideal. She invited us to bring the divine into the life of society, into the world – through love. Her talk only lasted a few minutes while I found myself being crushed by a feeling I had never had before, which – afterwards – no sorrowful nor difficult event could ever dent in: a united world is possible and I have the amazing possibility of building it with my own life! I had found it! I wanted to live like Chiara, like those young people I was among that afternoon, to have their faith, their push, their joy. The next day there was a rousing encounter with John Paul II at Saint Peter’s Square. During the return trip home, me – timid as I am – I bombarded the Gen with questions: I wanted to know everything about them! I began to visit them in my city, and the Gen talked to me about their secret: love for Jesus Forsaken in all the large and small sufferings in us and around us. I somehow realized that this was a radical experience of God I was dealing with here, one without half-measures. Jesus Forsaken was calling me to give Him everything, to follow Him. I was filled with an enormous fear: for me it me it was ALL or NOTHING. Strong suffering and pain were never lacking in the months following the Genfest. But the life I had begun with the Gen, the possibility of giving a meaning to pain, the unity among us that was made of concrete love and sharing, helped me to carry on, in spite of every obstacle – in an amazing adventure that widened my heart. I was experiencing that with God among us, all is possible and that the possibility of the unity of the human family was really doable.
Patrizia Bertoncello
Nov 23, 2017 | Focolare Worldwide
Paolo Balduzzi, TV journalist, presents the “Youth for a united World” during the live worldwide transmission.
It’s that great idea that was launched by Chiara Lubich in 1987, the idea she bequeathed to the new generations. That year, the Focolare foundress stood in front of a vast crowd of young people and explained to them the reason for the Genfest: “An explosion of fires, not artificial fireworks, but real fires, the fire of God’s love. The goal of ut omnes (“Father, may they all be one” [Jn 17:20-23]) draws near. Jesus wins over and draws people along, leaving behind everything that doesn’t move, like a stream of fresh water that leaves to the sides all the things that can’t be carried ahead in its limpid waters.” Chiara added: “You’ll see the miracles of God’s grace, because God is with us, God is in our midst. He’s the only Powerful One.” Standing among the young people was the current president of the Focolare, Maria Voce. “I’d like to say a huge thank you to the young people.” They’ve made a great act of courage “which seems like the answer of today to the appeal Chiara has launched ever since 1960: ‘Young people of the world unite!’ This appeal still resounds right now, not only for you, but for everyone. The goal of a united world has not yet been reached. The first generation couldn’t do it alone. The second won’t do it alone either, because its purpose is so vast. The idea of a united world has to be passed on from one generation to the next, and all of them united together can hope to bring it to fulfilment.” She went on to say: “The Genfest isn’t something that only regards the young, but everyone. That’s why I want to go, and I hope there will be many of us.” Everyone can do something. “Some may say: but I’m sick, I can’t… Offer your pain! Let’s all of us step up. You can help by offering hospitality; you can help the young people to prepare their programmes; you can give financial support for the young people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend. Let’s do all we can, whatever it takes. The Genfest is mine, it’s ours!” Before signing off, young person from the Philippines leaves everyone with a triple task: “First: organize a local Genfest. Second: do a concrete project to help at least one young person go to Manila. Third: Buy the T-shirt with our logo.” Find all the details at: Youth for a United World website, and remember this acronym Y4UW. See also: dev.focolare.org/en/genfest-2018/
Inspired by our experience of Genfest 1980 , Andrew Basquille, Eugene Murphy and I, all students at University College Dublin at the time, started to dedicate more time to playing music together and entered a period of sustained creativity that resulted in the composition of many songs both individually and collectively. “Yes to You”, the song that we performed at the GenFest in 1985 dates from this time. Here’s how it came to be written. Chiara Lubich visited London in 1981 and most of the Focolare Community in Ireland travelled to Great Britain for the event. One afternoon, as a group of us took lunch together close to the venue where Chiara was speaking, I started to play simple chords on the piano and developed a nice melody using a slightly unusual C / Dm / G progression (on guitar I wouldn’t have naturally played such a sequence). A volunteer, Joe McCarroll, a gifted songwriter in his own right, joined me and sang the lines “So many times that I’ve said maybe” to the emerging melody. 
I continued with the line “So many times that I said no” and continued with the melody when Andrew joined and completed the lyric which then became the verse. Over the next two days between Andrew and myself we completed about 3 verses but didn’t know where to go for a chorus. This was eventually added – melody and lyric together – by Eugene who stamped his musical sophistication on the song by taking the chorus to Am and then to a beautiful minor / major interplay in E that reflected and emphasised a new level of conviction in the choice – “Yes to you”. We were the asked to perform the song at the Genfest and spend months practising it. On the day we waited patiently for our turn to sing but began to realise that the show was running behind time. Sure enough, we were informed that our intervention had been cut and, bitterly disappointed, I started to pack up my guitar accordingly, months of effort and practice gone down the drain. But then, very suddenly, the decision was reversed and we found ourselves taking our positions on a vast stage without a sound check and unable to make eye contact with each other. I didn’t have time to take my own guitar and was given a Spanish guitar with nylon strings, a type I was not used to playing! So we played “Yes to you” at Genfest 1985 completely out of our comfort zone, forced to depend on the strength of our relationship with each other and our desire to have Jesus in our midst. My experience at Genfest 1985 was one of validation and verification – validation of my choice to live for unity and verification that it was possible. I had many experiences of large scale events – festivals, football matches, concerts – but at Genfest there was no hatred, hostility and enmity like when rival factions meet at soccer games and the fleeting alcohol / drug induced euphoria that’s common at festivals and concerts was replaced by a deeper, more lasting joy. 
