Year:
2011
Host: Fe y Alegría Ecuador
Summary:
Quito was the venue for the XLI International Congress of Fe y Alegría, which will take place from November 9th to 12th. Nineteen National Directors and 85 other delegates and special guests from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chad (Africa), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Venezuela and, of course, Ecuador will participate. The congress will take place at Casa de Espiritualidad F. Francisco de Jesús Bolaños (Av. Manuel Córdova Galarza, Parcayacu, diagonal to the Escuela Militar).
Objective:
The Board of Directors meeting held in February 2010 in Santo Domingo, not just defined the name of the XLI FyFyA Congress: “Identity and Spirituality Lived through the Mission”, but also it established as its objective: To share the living of identity and spirituality in FyA and its call to be faithful to the institutional mission and to be open to serve in new frontiers.
Background:
The XXIV Assembly of FIFyA, at its meeting in San Salvador-El Salvador, in November 2009, after considering several topics for the 2010 International Congress, chose the Identity and spirituality of Fe y Alegría. The Assembly, in choosing this theme, intended that the XLI Congress 2010 would deepen both aspects essential to the institutional mission.
The Board of Directors instructed the Executive Secretary to ask all the FyAs to collect video testimonies from members of the Movement in which they could share their experience living the identity and spirituality of the FyA. He also asked FyA Colombia for a study on popular spirituality; FyA Brazil for a video with testimonies on the identity of young people and FyA Ecuador for a video with testimonies on the identity of indigenous people, to share them and reflect on them at the XLI Congress in the light of the theological reading of a theologian invited to the congress. The aim was, on the one hand, to look at and reflect on the identity and spirituality of two specific target groups and on popular spirituality and, on the other hand, to look at and reflect on the identity and spirituality of the members of the Movement in order to build a guiding framework that helps to live the identity and spirituality in the mission of service to the frontiers of exclusion, marginalisation and poverty.
The Congress:
The dynamics of the XLI Congress deepened reflection fundamentally on the spirituality of FyA, as an essential feature of identity. It used a dynamic that combined research, collection of personal testimonies, analysis, dialogue and the construction of keys and challenges of institutional identity and spirituality. Therefore, based on the study on popular spirituality in FyA carried out by the FyA Colombia team, the testimonies of young Brazilians, indigenous people, Paraguayans, Ecuadorians and members of most of the Fe y Alegrías from the different countries, and the reflections and experiences of all the delegates and guests at the Congress, a series of features that characterise the spirituality of Fe y Alegría and a series of keys and challenges of institutional identity and spirituality were identified and agreed upon.