OFFICIAL NAME
Nuovi Orizzonti
ESTABLISHED
1993
HISTORY
In 1990 Chiara Amirante began to walk to Termini railway station at night to respond to the emergency of social disorientation. She met the more desperate young people addicted to drugs, alone, and outcast people rejected due to their involvement in some form of deviant behaviour and criminality. In 1993 the Volunteer Association Nuovi Orizzonti was started. In 1994 the first welcoming community was opened in Rome. In a few years the pedagogic rehabilitation program and “The art of loving,” envisioned by the founder also for external groups, reveal success and efficacy. The same rehabilitated young people felt the desire to get involved in living the charism and in street evangelization.
In 1996 the project Cittadella Cielo (Little City of Heaven) took off. In 1997 Camillo Cardinal Ruini recognized Nuovi Orizzonti as a private association of diocesan right in Rome and a new house in Piglio (Frosinone) was opened, that now is the central headquarters and formation center at the international level. In 2000 Cittadello Cielo was started in Brazil and in Bosnia. From 2000 to 2010 centers and groups multiplied also abroad. From 2006 the Light Riders were born and soon spread in many countries of the world. On December 8, 2012 the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed the recognition of Nuovi Orizzonti as an International Association of the Faithful.
IDENTITY
The International Association of the Faithful Nuovi Orizzonti is composed especially by lay people. Some of them make promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and joy deciding to commit themselves to God completely through the charism of the community. The general goal of the association is the sanctity of its members. They commit themselves to bringing love to all those who have not known love, bringing life to those who only know ‘death,’ and the joy of the Resurrection to those who feel desperate. For these reasons, all members strive to have a preferential love for those who live in situations of hardship, marginalisation, moral and material poverty, because they recognize in them the presence of Jesus forsaken and abandoned, who took on himself the sin of the world. Aware of their own weaknesses the members of the association abandon themselves in the hands of the One who wins everything because they are convinced that in that way they can be channels of His power and mercy. The specific vocation of the members is to bring always the Joy of the Resurrection with a special attention to the descent of Jesus into the Hell and His Resurrection. The Little Ones of Joy are more than 600 committed to living the specific charism through promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and joy.
ORGANISATION
The governing Body of the Association is structures as follows: the Central Assembly, the President, the General Spiritual Director, the Vice President, the Coordinating Council and the Council of the Small Ones. The various levels of membership are: effective members, affiliated members or intern members. The effective members and the intern members are called Little Ones of Joy and are those who commit themselves to living the spirituality and the charism of the association. They take temporary commitments (intern members) or definitive commitments (effective members) pronouncing promises of poverty, chastity, obedience and joy. The Little Ones of Joy are divided into: Little Ones of Joy living community life and Little Ones of Joy not living community life, married Little Ones of Joy, priests Little Ones of Joy, Little brothers and Little sisters of the Risen Lord, men and women religious Little Ones of Joy, diocesan priests Little Ones of Joy. Affiliated members are: brothers, aid-workers, Light Riders. All the members of the association are committed in a concrete way to living -at various levels- the communion of gifts and talents received from the Lord in the Team of Service composed by: the Love apostles, the Little Ones of Jeshua, the St. Joseph Team, the Minstrels of God, Little Ones of Mary, the Little Incendiaries, the Emmanuels, the Micors, the Harmony families, the Rainbow Kids. The association is divided in Zones.
MEMBERSHIP
The association counts more than 600 effective members, 20.000 collaborators and thousands of simpatizers. The Light Riders are more than 150.000, present in 13 countries as follows: in Asia 1, in Europe 9, in North America 1, and in South America 2. Through the various evangelization campaigns more than one million persons are reached.
WORKS
Nuovi Orizzonti owns almost 142 centers: residence centers for people in difficult, deviant, and with problems linked to drug addiction; alcoholism, and other forms of addiction. There are also centers to work habilitation (to teach to work and to hold a job), formation centers to International Volunteer Work; Listening centers; families open to welcome people in difficult situation; Centers of spirituality. There are 101 service centers: prevention and campaign awareness; communication and mass media; arts and theatre; formation and culture promotion; publishing houses; social services and International cooperation; economy and work; spirituality and prayer (500 prayer groups are formed).
Under construction are 5 Little City of Heaven (Cittadella Cielo), welcoming villages and formation villages.
PUBLICATIONS
Orizzonti News, published every three months
WEBSITE
www.nuoviorizzonti.org
www.cavalieridellaluce.net
HEADQUARTERS
Associazione Nuovi Orizzonti
via Prenestina, 95 - 03010 Piglio (FR)
Tel. [+39]0775-502353 - Fax [+39]0775-502353
E-mail: piglio@nuoviorizzonti.org
