Screening of “Finding Vince 400”, the Festival honoring Saint Vincent de Paul started today. Its goal is to inspire people, not only to make charity global.
At the Centro Mariapoli in Castel Gandolfo, a Round Table debate attended by over 300 young people from all over the world opened the event. Welcome greetings came from Fr. Tomaž Mavrič CM, Superior General, Fr. Joseph Agostino, CM and Alma Perez, one of the organizers.
“The Festival is a great news,” Father Tomaž began, “because there is a strong tendency of collective perception towards negative feelings, yet, and this festival has shown it, there are talents who wish to communicate the good, give it a voice and inspire others to take action. ”
The objective of the Festival is to use the language of cinema and theater to reach out to young people and involve them in this process of globalization of charity. As Father Agostino pointed it out, “once the Church used art to communicate the Gospel, then this attitude was lost and today with the Festival it is recovered in a certain sense.”
Expectations on the festival are high, because it is a new experience and like all new things will come to an account with numerous risks, but the staff who organized the program is confident because during months of preparation of the festival the films have moved and inspired te organizers themselves who, as Alma Perez said, often asked themselves important questions such as “What can I do to help others? Why did I not do anything until today? ”
A festival which places itself as a watershed of a profound change in the communication of the Vincentian charism in the light of 400 years and the first year of the fifth century. But above all, in line with great questions of the Synod of Bishops taking place these days which has as its fundamental theme: Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment. With Finding Vince 400 the Vincentian Family actualizes the charism and the relationship with the new generations demonstrating once again how the charity is inventive to infinity.
“One of my great fears was that no works would come” Father Agostino said, “instead almost 4000 have arrived and this has shown us we have touched a nerve”, because art being a mirror of beauty can and must be a mirror of truth and of the justice. To share this art and its beauty it is necessary to change perspective and, as Alma Perez has pointed out several times, “to understand that we are not alone, but we are part of a great community and we all must take care of the destiny of this community”.
“Finding Vince 400” is a dream which becomes reality and Father Tomaž insisted on this point, so that more and more people adhere to this Vincentian dream. Only in this way the globalization of charity can become reality!
Girolamo Grammatico
Communication Office
