On 4 February 2011, in the offices of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, a ceremony took place during which the decree of approval ad experimentum of the statutes was conferred on Nuovi Orizzonti (New Horizons www.nuoviorizzonti.org), recognising it as an international association of the faithful. The ceremony was yet another opportunity for the Pontifical Council for the Laity to meet with the representatives of the Nuovi Orizzonti who had come to Rome from various countries in which the association is working. They came to celebrate this important and historical step in the life of their community.
In addition to the formal conferring of the decree of approval of the statutes, the ceremony was a time for the participants to pray together in thanksgiving. This included music and songs by the members of Nuovi Orizzonti, and a reflection and sharing of the Word of God with the participants by Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. It was also a time for Chiara Amirante to give testimony about the association.
Nuovi Orizzonti was founded in Rome around 1993, on the initiative of Chiara Amirante, a young woman who wanted to share the fullness of joy that comes from her faith in the risen Christ with humanity's desperate, abandoned, marginalized and needy who live on the streets. In a short space of time many people, eager to share Chiara's experience of giving to others, joined her, and the increasing number of requests for help addressed to her by people in need, convinced her to open the first shelter on the outskirts of the capital, where young people themselves, the slaves of addiction to alcohol and drugs, can rebuild themselves in the light of the Gospel and through a rehabilitation treatment program drawn up by Chiara herself. Within a few years, many centres opened, first in Italy and then abroad. Numerous people have adhered to the ideal of Nuovi Orizzonti, devoting themselves entirely to social projects, formation and rehabilitation. Currently, Nuovi Orizzonti is highly organised and responds with generosity to the many needs of those who find themselves in serious trouble, intervening in all areas of social disadvantage.
Cardinal Ryłko speaks to the new association
At the thanksgiving Mass celebrated on 6 February in gratitude to God for allowing Nuovi Orizzonti to reach this stage in their associative life, Cardinal Ryłko said in his homily: “You are engaged in witnessing to young people who are lost and hurting the joy of the risen Christ. This is an extremely important task nowadays. The world is filled with so many distorted images of Christianity. There is a common cliché that regards Christianity as a list of prohibitions, a cage that mortifies the deepest desires of the human heart and all yearning for freedom and happiness. Pope Benedict XVI insists that nothing could be further from the truth. The Gospel is a programme for a very attractive life that guarantees full freedom and happiness for every human person. [...] Dear friends of the Nuovi Orizzonti community, I wish you happiness always in your charism. Place yourselves at the service of the Church’s mission with joy and enthusiasm, as you have been doing so far. The decree that you have received is confirmation that the Church needs you, has faith in you and depends on you!...”.
Testimony given by Chiara Amirante at the conferring of the decree
“[...] I said to myself: that is my vocation! I want to search out all my brothers and sisters who are most in need and to take on their sorrow, to bear the weight of their suffering. I want to be in the Love of Jesus and spend my life witnessing to the world the fullness of joy in Christ’s coming to give himself to us, and that the price was the blood of God! I felt this one desire grow in my heart like fire that I could not contain. This desire soon became the desire of many others!
Every time I read the Acts of the Apostles I was fascinated by the radical evangelical nature of the first Christian communities: “All who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2: 44). This is how the idea arose of the first Nuovi Orizzonti welcoming community. This community was to have as their model the community of the early Christians, and their first fundamental commitment was to try to live the Gospel to the letter. [...] That is simply how it began. The Nuovi Orizzonti adventure over these past years has always been a new surprise of incredible miracles worked by God’s love. There was the miracle of the increasing number of centres, works, citadels and thousands of evangelising initiatives. There was the miracle of providence (the continuous multiplication of the loaves and fishes ... of pasta, meat, clothes, medicine and all kinds of things needed! [...] The miracle of God’s love that heals the wounds of broken hearts, gives sight to the blind, breaks the chains of the most terrible burdens. The miracle of the Resurrection is being repeated for thousands and thousands of young people who were imprisoned in the inferno of the death of their soul, and who are now engaged in finding all kinds of ways of witnessing to the world the joy of the Resurrection. It is from the people of the night that the One who is Love draws up his new people who are Champions of the Light!”.
