English 
An invitation to enlarge your tent
Since 1954, the Brazilian Church has chosen a social theme every year to explore and experience during the Lenten period. This year, the Fraternity Campaign turns 60!
The Fraternity Campaign is a concrete opportunity to experience charity and encourage reflection, in a climate of prayer and dialogue on urgent issues to which it is necessary to respond with effective actions.
This year, the Fraternity Campaign highlights a theme that cannot be called a problem, but rather a solution: “Fraternity and social friendship”, with a slogan that invites conversion of gaze and heart to educate people to look beyond their own borders and learn to become empathetic with those you meet along the way: “You are all brothers and sisters!”
In a world full of family and social conflicts, of violence, real and virtual, so great as to instill terror in Brazilian cities, the invitation is raised to live a culture of encounter, to grow in the ability to welcome diversity as a gift and not as an obstacle. A brother and sister who are different in way of thinking, sexual identity, nationality or political ideology is not an enemy from which one must defend oneself.
Fraternity Campaign invites people to come out of themselves, to overcome indifference and egocentricism to help those who live in dangerous situations: women who suffer violence, children sold and abused, families made fragile by poverty and problems, migrants who live on the margins of society and many other categories of people who need welcoming arms, helping hands, people who know how to share life and goods. The Campaign still invites to take care of the Common Home as if it were our own home, which must not be attacked and destroyed by greed!
The Church of Manaus also “went out in to campaign”, marking the official start of the Fraternity Campaign on February 14 th . The celebration took place in a square: a meeting place where relationships are built and strengthened, where you go for a walk with friends and family, where you take the opportunity to have a chat and have a little something together. A place of meeting and friendship where relationships strengthen or break for many reasons. It was a moment of prayer, inspired by the image of the Campaign poster, which always tries to communicate the theme in a concise way. This year in the center of the image there is a table, around which family and friends are gathered to share bread and life.
People different in age, sex, nationality and life choices. In poster there is also a little dog, to remind us that nature also needs care because it is part of our Common Home. Together, bishops, priests, religious, lay people, Christians and people of other religions, we prayed and shared the joy of being a fraternal church that seeks to live synodality, who strive to open doors so that everyone feels welcomed, also to go out and be close to situations in which life is threatened. We tried to help those present to perceive the beauty and grandeur of a community united in the certainty that a fraternity that is born from God and grows in feeling like brothers and sisters is possible.
“Expand the tent”: this was the appeal launched. Deepening and reflecting on the proposed theme is the challenge proposed to those present so that social friendship, as described in the Encyclical Fratelli tutti, becomes real among us, wherever we are.
Sr. Rosanna Marchetti
