Before the elections, a couple of newspaper articles gave the impression that the Focolare Movement was supportive of certain senatorial candidates in the upcoming May 13 elections.
The history of the Focolare Movement and its very nature, characterized by a strong communitarian spirituality among persons of diverse cultures, religions and convictions, clearly does not have any tendency to support, as a movement and as a block, specific candidates.
Instead, in the light of the spiritual and cultural formation that the movement offers to all its members, each individual member is encouraged to make his own free, mature and responsible choice in all fields of personal endeavor, not the least in the political realm, especially in all-too-important political exercises.
In fact, the movement is able to make its contribution to fostering universal brotherhood precisely through persons who collaborate together for the common good, in spite of their differing political orientations. This is the essence of the Political Movement for Unity founded by Chiara Lubich.
Thus, for several years now, in various countries and also in the Philippines, adherents of the Focolare Movement are active in different political parties as a result of their personal convictions, without engaging in any way the movement as a whole in the pursuit of partisan goals.
—RAY ASPRER and MIRANDA JANSSEN,
directors, Luzon Zones,
Focolare Movement