The Ets Lay Missionary Association (ALM) with its Volunteers, together with the Archdiocese of Agrigento, organizes the “ALM Week 2024”, an itinerant missionary animation camp which will be held in Agrigento from 1st to 8th July. Archbishop Alessandro Damiano declared: “It is the first time that the Archdiocese collaborates with the volunteers of the Lay Association. Your participation reveals your desire to be active and responsible protagonists in the world, promoters of the themes you have chosen and which concern us all personally. I therefore invite you to give your creative and engaging contribution to the animation and dialogue with those you meet in our territory, without exception, seeking ways, places and methods that are increasingly appropriate to the challenges and opportunities that our complex, but also stimulating, time Offers us. I hope that from this event comes a fuller awareness of our Christian mission and a more lively docility to the power of the Holy Spirit, so that all the action of the Church and every pastoral initiative are lived in a missionary dimension of testimony and announcement. I heartily bless you and those you will meet on your journey.”
“ALM volunteers have been working for months – Mimmo Gambino from Agrigento, ALM volunteer responsible for Sicily, tells us – they work for this event dedicated to all those who wish to know and experience the mission in our territories”.
The chosen theme is: “Mediterranean: together to learn, reflect, pray, promote justice and sow peace”. This week’s goal – continues Gambino – “it will mean gaining experience with the various realities present in the Agrigento area, understanding their fragilities and potential, through meetings with their witnesses, to share, discuss and explore the themes dear to the “Mission”.
The participants, who accepted the invitation, come from various Italian Dioceses: Turin, Rome, Bari-Bitonto, Oria, Vicenza, Treviso and diocese of Padua, they will arrive in the city Monday 1 July.
“With you, writes Clementina Iezzi, ALM president, we want to share, discuss and explore the themes dear to the mission. The ALM is grateful to you for the commitment you will put into living these days. There is a need to broaden our gaze, to go out, to go further, to make alliances, to open ourselves to the unexpected that the Spirit inevitably brings with it”.
The week’s appointments will be itinerant. The ALM Week will begin Tuesday 2 July with the visit to the Muetàn and the Lucchesiana Library in the afternoon the guests will follow the Art Itinerary and at 8.00 pm, in the Cloister of the Archbishop’s Seminary, the Archbishop Monsignor Alessandro Damiano will officially inaugurate the opening of the WEEK ALM 2024 with the Exhibition Missionary and the welcome greeting to the participants. The evening will be animated by a representation of the Folk group Val d’Akragas from Agrigento, directed by maestro Lello Casesa, and voice and cello pieces will be performed by professors Eleonora Tabbì voice and Mauro Cottone cello. For the occasion, the video “Viva La Vita” by the string students of the Empedocle Classical and Musical High School of Agrigento will be screened. The diocesan contact person for “Sovvenire” will also speak during the evening.
Wednesday 3 July at 5.00 pm in Porto Empedocle the Relic of the Blessed Rosario Angelo Livatino will be welcomed at the parish of SS. Trinità, where Don Giuseppe Cumbo, Vicar General, will introduce the figure of the Blessed Rosario Livatino and at 6.00 pm he will preside over the Holy Mass. At the end, the evening will continue with the concert of the Empedoclino Interparish Polyphonic Choir “Santa Teresina di Lisieux” directed by Don Gioacchino Falsone, the presentation of the book “Rosario Livatino” by Marilisa Della Monica and the Missionary Exhibition with testimonies curated by the ALM Volunteers.
Thursday 4 July at 10:00 the community of the city of Realmonte will welcome the group in the premises of the parish of San Domenico where Don Stefano Nastasi and Don Fabio Majorana (former parish priests of Lampedusa) will hold a meeting on migrants in the light of their experience. At the end, sharing lunch together with the Migrant Community present and the visit to the Scala dei Turchi. The program will continue at 7.00 pm in the Maria SS Parish. of the Villaseta Chain with the Eucharistic Celebration presided over by the singer-songwriter Friar Giuseppe Di Fatta of the order of friars minor who at 8.00 pm will hold a moment of reflection with a “Concert-Prayer”. During the evening, the Missionary Exhibition will also be set up with the testimonies of the ALM Volunteers.
Friday 5 July at 10:00 in Agrigento in the premises of via Barone 2/A, the Director of the Diocesan Caritas Valerio Landri and his team will present the activities promoted by Caritas and the Mondoaltro Foundation. At 4.00 pm, in the Seminary, a meeting will be held on the theme of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, followed at 6.00 pm by the meeting with the city’s Islamic Community in the Agrigento Mosque in Piazza Ravanusella.
