Tokyo. In the sacred hall in which Chiara Lubich herself spoke in 1981, the president of the Focolare, Maria Voce, remembers the two great founders: Chiara Lubich and Nikkyo Niwano.

“It is with great emotion that I find myself here, I feel as if I am enveloped by the spirit of our two founders, who strongly desired a fraternal bond between our two organizations.”

With these words, Maria Voce began her talk in Tokyo before the Buddhist members of Rissho Kosei-kai, who represented various communities of Tokyo and the surrounding area. Almost thirty years after the prophetic experience of Chiara Lubich, the current leader of the Focolare, who was invited by the President Niciko Niwano to appear before a large representation of the members of the Japanese Buddhist movement, Maria Voce confirmed with her presence and with her words the continuity of this with the experience of dialogue initiated by the two movements at the end of the 1970s.

Maria Voce retraced these years of profound friendship and reciprocal discoveries that lead members of the two movements to recognize one another, in all parts of the world, true brothers and sisters. Quoting Chiara Lubich, she affirmed, “We are of different religions, different nationalities, different cultures, yet there are common ties. They are not the effect of an effort or of a human project, but are the supernatural work of God, for a purpose that God conceived, and that to us is not completely known.” We assisted, in these decades, in the revealing of this plan, and the meeting today has signified the desire and the decision to continue in order to contribute to the realization of universal fraternity.

Maria Voce, emphasized it with strength and clarity, again and again, in the course of her talk. “In the taking up of the legacy of Chiara, I myself also felt profoundly this desire and commitment,” fully shared also by the president, Niciko Niwano, who, on the first anniversary of Chiara’s death, wrote, “I believe that, if the spirituality of love and of unity of Chiara, and that of the compassion and of the one vehicle of Nikkyo Niwano, are linked, it is really to give life to a power able to face the world. I want, therefore, that the bonds created between the Movement of the Focolare and the Rissho Kosei-kai be reinforced and be able to guide us together on the path of truth. I solemnly commit myself to all of you.”

“I fully share these words,” Maria Voce echoed. “The salvation of the world of tomorrow depends on people who bring to it a flow of love, not limited but universal. It is a walk that we are already making together, encouraging one another; and that it will bring us to a continual conversion of the heart, rendering us always more aware that – as Chiara always said to us – the more we love man the more we find God.”

In the afternoon, Maria Voce spent two hours with a group of eighty leaders of the youth section of the Buddhist movement, responding to their questions with direct language, clear and strong. It was clear in the course of the dialogue how fruitful the encounter and the collaboration between the young people of the two movements has been in these years.

by Roberto Catalano