Vatican Radio interviewed Minister General Br Massimo Fusarelli. The interview will be broadcast on Monday, 23 January, at 11.05 a.m. for the "La Finestra del Papa" programme.
Watch the full interview in italian:
Ukraine
The first time I was there was in April during Holy Week from the Saturday before Palm Sunday until Holy Saturday. It was an opportunity for an ecumenical and interreligious prayer time on the border between Romania and Ukraine. It was a powerful event because this war is also being fought against a particular background. Religion can never justify war, so we wanted to say it loudly with this meeting and prayer, each according to their own tradition. We also visited some refugee centres with this ecumenical group, and then in April, I visited two of our houses. I listened to stories of those who had suffered violence, such as children, teenagers, and women. The impact of these stories touched me greatly.
The second time I went to Ukraine was at the end of October to give a sign to the friars. Our friaries have not been touched by the bombs. Still, my brothers are affected within and are devastated because they also have relatives and family members in the army and because they are constantly listening to people who are experiencing war.
Today, both the friars of the Latin Church and the Greek Catholics are busy accompanying people, listening to them. They have even gone out into the bombing to bring food to the elderly who no longer leave their homes. They opened the basements of the friaries that were turned into shelters, and we helped create some of them. Now we have helped to equip our friaries and the parish halls with generators so that people, especially children, can take refuge there, have heating, and cook something hot as there is no electricity.
In October, I saw all this, and the hardest thing for me was to visit two cemeteries with many Ukrainian soldiers between 20 and 25 years old, all very young.
Most of those I saw died in the first month of the war. This gave me the impression of boys who had been sent into the deep end. I met mothers and grandmothers, they hugged me, and we cried together, and they all told me, in one way or another, 'we hope in God and have faith'.
I collected the splinters of a strong and rooted people who also have faith as a guiding light. In a centre where children and war orphans are taken in, I was given drawings, strangely full of colour. So bright. Among the stories I still carry with me, I saw an old woman curled up in her blanket on the ground with nothing, just a plastic bag and a small cage with a small parrot she had brought with her from a small village.
The workers told me that this was her friend, and that this woman no longer has anyone or anything, but she carries this little bird around who is obviously her friend and consoles her. When she turned around, she saw me and gave me a very sorrowful but beautiful smile. This smile of this wrinkled face stayed with me.
Eighth Centenary
The Franciscan Centenary is divided into four centenaries as we retrace the last years of Francis' life. This year 2023, we will look at the definitive approval of the Rule and the Christmas of Greccio. In 2024 we will commemorate the 800th anniversary of the stigmata of St Francis at La Verna, and in 2025 - with the Holy Year - we will focus on the Canticle of Brother Sun, The Canticle of Creatures, and the theme of integral ecology. Finally, in 2026, we will address the Transitus of Francis, Passover, and Death.
It is a centenary tracing Francis' last years, culminating in the stigmata and the tension between the primitive ideal and the adaptation of the growing Franciscan fraternity to reality. Francis himself fought and experienced this tension, which finds its highest point in the definitive approval of the Rule. So we want a memory of Francis' last years that is neither harmless nor shameful.
Franciscan Charism
We want to deepen our identity. I have just come from Angola, and there they are already planning a journey and initiatives to make St Francis better known in these years, with children, with schools and with catechumens coming to the Faith.
I will be in Brazil next week and then in Colombia. A more lively celebration is also taking shape in Latin America. So we hope to allow everyone to get to know St Francis well, in non-European countries, and to enter into dialogue with other great religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
Francis is a great Herald of peace, and he helps us, his brothers, and his sons, to become today's agents of reconciliation and peace. Our Order is growing in Africa and Asia, and we must ask ourselves how they are bringing something to us. In these new presences, we want to walk with these women and men to learn a new colour of our charism. We need to listen to these realities and these brothers, learn from them and rethink our charism.
