“Ciupa” Community – Youth Group for the Care for Persons with Disabilities

Ciupa is a community where we take care of disabled people. Ciupa can be described by a lot of different words: love, integration, celebration, prayer. Thanks to taking care about each other we shape our hearts.

We meet every Thursday on evening Holy Mass in a Chapel. After the Mass we go to our room where we spend time together. During our meeting we talk about our problems, drink tea and eat some sweets. In December we bake gingerbread, during the Lent we prepare Way of the Cross, sometimes we have a party or we play some games. At 21.00 we mentally connect with Czestochowa and sing Jasna Góra appeal.

In our meetings participate about 40 people. Volunteers are mainly students , but not always. We have also people who finished study and they work now, in our community sometimes appear people under 18 years old. Though we are in different age, have different mental efficiency and body of some of us sometimes can not do easy things we find common ground.

Every year we collect money to go to the camp. Thanks to good people who help us we spend about week during the holidays in a place next to Poznan. On those camps we pray together, play games, swim in a lake and do many beautiful things. It is very important time for our community.

One of the most important thing in our community are bonds. We meet in our homes, call each other, become friends. Thanks to love which we receive from disabled people we learn how to love.

Tweeting with GOD

Tweeting with GOD started in 2014 in dialogue with young people living in a modern, secularised society, searching for answers to their many questions. The project intends to stimulate honest conversation about the Catholic faith, with the aim of accompanying young people and helping them to discover its beauties and to become an engaged member of Church and society. This is not done by simply communicating the teachings of the Church, but by entering into a dialogue and searching for answers together.

The youthful aspirations of the project can be recognised in the multimedia approach it takes. A printed book is linked to online material through a smartphone application. Online video is also an important tool. An international team of young people maintains social media accounts in various languages.

The project was started by young people in the Netherlands, and quickly gained interest from very distinct countries. So far, the project has been translated into over 10 languages, among which Korean. Many more translations of the book and the multimedia material are in preparation. The project is always developed in collaboration with local young people and the local Bishops’ Conference.

We believe the reason for the great interest in the project is precisely its youthful spirit, the brief answers and openness to dialogue, and the way it prepares Christians to live in dialogue with an ever more secularised society.

Download the flyer (EN PDF 3MB)

Course Cana of Galilee

This is a weekend catechesis for engaged couples. It is addressed to those who want to enter their marriage in the conscious way at the Roman Catholic Church. Participants take part in lectures as well as interactive classes and learn about true love or how sexual differences between a woman and a man can affect the relationship. But above all, they realize that inviting Jesus for their wedding and family life is worth doing.

“1 Million for the Pope”

Pope Francis wants change! One of his most urgent calls for change is expressed in the foreword of the DOCAT – the Social Doctrine of the Church for young people! There, he is looking at the needs of the world and is wondering: “Can we not do more to make this revolution of love and justice a reality in many parts of this tormented planet? He is screaming out: “If a Christian in these days looks away from the need of the poorest of the poor, then in reality he is not a Christian!” In fact, to break it all down, he is dreaming of a revolution of love and justice based on Social Doctrine. ” I wish I had a million young Christians or, even better, a whole generation who are for their contemporaries ‘walking, talking social doctrine'”.

This call of the Holy Father has gone out to the whole world through a growing number of translations of the DOCAT (currently 32), the release of an App in which young people can directly answer this call (www.docat-app.com), and through a video message (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB_eIm3X6tU). Only 6 months after the release of this campaign called “1 Million for the Pope” many grass-roots as well as hierarchical and nationwide programs arose all around the world. Only judging from the dawn of this project, it is already predictable that this will be one of the biggest projects concerning Social Doctrine within the church, and one of the Church’s best, most attractive and successful tools to reach the young people of the world with the Pope’s intentions within the next years.

Ecoles de prière pour les jeunes

Des écoles de prière se créent aujourd’hui partout en France. Elles veulent permettre aux enfants et aux jeunes de rencontrer le Christ dans la prière et l’amour fraternel. Les écoles de prière s’adressent aux jeunes, garçons et filles, de 6 à 18 ans pour des séjours de cinq à dix jours. Il s’agit d’un mode d’activité ponctuel dans l’année qui ne veut pas se substituer aux activités paroissiales ni aux mouvements de jeunes. Le séjour est structuré autour d’un thème choisi dans la Parole de Dieu chaque année par l’association ; en 2016, le texte choisi était : « Heureux les miséricordieux car ils obtiendront miséricorde » (Mt 5, 7). Ensuite, une Parole est choisie pour chaque jour sur ce thème, selon le schéma suivant : 1er jour, accueil, puis Marie, le pardon, l’eucharistie, la croix, la résurrection et l’envoi. Ces différents textes sont proposés pour former un itinéraire spirituel pour la semaine.
L’équipe d’animation se compose d’un « berger », responsable de l’aspect spirituel, d’un directeur, d’un prêtre accompagnateur et d’animateurs expérimentés. Les animateurs sont appelés par les trois responsables. Ils choisissent des animateurs motivés et formés et qui sont aussi bien des jeunes adultes, des parents, des grands-parents que des séminaristes ou des religieux. Il y a souvent des catéchistes parmi les animateurs et animatrices. En 2014, 1500 jeunes ont participé à ces séjours.

Valerie and the priest

A young journalist, for whom the catholic church is merely an antiquated institution, accompanies a young priest in his daily life. For a whole year she spends about two weeks in a month with him: She observes his prayer practice, his work as a chaplain in a parish and she accompanies him in his free time.

She wants to know, why a young man like him chooses to be a priest. What does the believe in God means to him, how does this influence his life and his actions and the way he thinks? She writes about their conversations and her impressions in a blog and on facebook. There are also a lot of video clips, where their dialogues about a wide range of topics are shown, which can also be fewed on a youtube-channel. By the means the internet offers we can present hit rates, that show, how very successful this project is. With the blog and the site on facebook we get monthly in touch with 600.000 to 1.3 Mio. people.

The people, who read the texts and watch the videos, are essentialy young people between 18 and 24. Among them there are a lot of, who are active believers, but there are even more, who are distant from the church or nonbelievers. For all of them the project offers an opportunity to find answers to questions, they wouldn´t have asked without an outward impulse. The project is initiated and accounted for by the German National center for vocation in cooperation with the Bishop’s conference and an agency, that is specalized in strategic planning.

Prayer Spaces in Schools

Children and young people are innately curious about life. Growing up raises lots of questions, some to do with their experience, both the good and the bad, and some to do with their sense of wonder at the universe we live in and whether there’s more to life than meets the eye.

Prayer Spaces in Schools enable children and young people, to explore these life questions, spirituality and faith in a safe, creative and interactive way. Taking a Christian perspective as a starting point, prayer spaces give children and young people an opportunity to develop skills of personal reflection and to explore prayer in an open, inclusive and safe environment. There are lots of ways to choose and organise the prayer activities in your prayer space.

One could choose prayer activities to fit with a particular season or event (e.g. Advent, a sporting event, exams). One could choose a set of prayer activities that follow a particular journey or Biblical story (e.g. the Lord’s Prayer, the Good Samaritan). Or one could choose prayer activities that blend around particular themes or even school values or school topics (e.g. self-image, thankfulness). What’s important is that you choose your prayer activities carefully.

Young Catholic Academy

The Young Catholic Academy consisted of two parts.

1) A competition with the aim to hear the voices of young people according the Year of Mercy. So they could send their work and thoughts about Mercy (social initiatives, art, literature, theology, philosophy, music). Because of the possibility to win something and to join at the Academy and to receive the price from our Youth Bishop, a lot of young people joined the contest. They sent wonderful art work, short stories, reported about their work with refugees,… and: ALL young people in the age between 15 and 28 dealt with the team according to their charismas and showed themselfes as a living part of the body of Christ. This has been the beginning of young catholic culture of mercy in Germany!

2) The Academy-Weekend offered times of Holy Mass, communion prayer, workshops, speeches (two bishops and on high rank politican). The young people got in contact with each other and because of all dealt with their talents with the theme of Mercy, everyone had to offer a new perspective to the other one. It was great to see! Our job has been to accompany these young people in their talents to bring them into the body of Christ. And we will continue this work, so that art, music, literature, … will become an offer for Christ. This is a big dream and we can accompany Young people on their ways. Just great and easy: a competition and bringing them together.