Dear Editor, I have the great joy of being able to tell you that the celebration of the Eucharistic Year instituted by the Holy Father has had very great resonance in China also, because our community loves the Eucharist very much and seeks to live its Mystery in their own lives. We held an open Eucharistic Congress in Shanghai participated in by many priests and laity, with a solemn closure in the holy mass celebrated on September 24 last, in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Sheshan, by the auxiliary bishop Monsignor Joseph Xing Wenzhi. As many as 2,500 believers received communion on the occasion. The celebration was preceded by a solemn procession that, starting from our seminary, wound with prayers and hymns along the streets that lead to the hill of Sheshan on the summit of which stands the sanctuary of Our Lady so venerated by us all. At the end of everything, I myself had the joy of imparting to the congregation the solemn Eucharistic blessing that closed our celebrations. The photos I attach testify to the extraordinary event that, with great joy, we have experienced in our diocese of Shanghai. Our community has prayed and continues to pray for the whole universal Church and we are sure that on your part you constantly remember this portion of the Church, still reduced in number, but very lively in witnessing to its life. A memory and a heartfelt greeting, always in communion, believe me yours

Dear and excellent Monsignor,

I received with joy and emotion your letter and the photos on the Eucharistic procession. I thank you from my heart. I would have greatly desired you to be present at the Synod; but I hope that I shall be able to meet you again either here or in Shanghai. The magazine 30Days has published an interview with you. Thank you also for that. With many memories and in joint prayers believe me your most devoted,

THE DISCALCED CARMELITES FROM THE “CARMELO
DEL SACRO CUORE” CONVENT
Turin

A yes that is ever more convinced as time passes

Dear Senator Giulio Andreotti, most dear friend and brother in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we received and read your letter with great joy. It was an inspiration of the Spirit, because you express sentiments that only He suggests. And it is a joy to think of a man who has spent his best energies for our Italy, challenging, with the gift of a rock-like faith, calumnies and injustices and remaining on the field of battle with courage, in the fulfillment of a mission that realizes the holy will of God.
Thank you, dear brother, for the example given to all those who are in good faith, and know how to appreciate it. And so we find ourselves with a friend who, especially because he was severely tried, believes in the power of prayer, and in the life of the sisters who by vocation try to be “praying lives” for the entire world. And this is a lovely gift, because genuine friendship is sacred and Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us this when he says to his followers: «I will not call you servants anymore, but friends». Yes, we are always close to you, we think of you in the first line of the world’s battlefield with the arms of truth in love and, through the reality of the Mystical Body, we can feel ourselves not only close, but one single thing. So we too look at you and it comforts us in this time so little favorable to definitive choices, to think that you work to help the young especially to take paths that will unveil the beauty of being Christians. We have had the opportunity to meet young people who go to Buddhist schools! As if Jesus, Son of God, cannot give them what they are seeking, through the great schools of Carmelite, Franciscan, etc., spirituality!
And now I come to say thank you for the gift of a magazine greatly appreciated by us, and yes, because we have been subscribers for some time! Personally I read it all because it is most interesting and well done. The double copy is also useful to us, because that way we can circulate it. Just recently I introduced Doctor Casaccia, the cardiologist, to it and hope he will subscribe. In our convent we are ten professed nuns and one young twenty-four year old postulant, Eleonora. Simple and determined, we hope she may be joined by some young sister to share with her the path of the novitiate. Now I would like to tell you a personal confidence. I lived my youth up to the age of 28 years in Catholic Action and, as we were then asked, involved in the Christian Democrats, in the trade union, etc. Then the call to leave the work, that I loved, but felt was insufficient, to enter the Carmelites. It is now 47 years that I have lived there and thanks be to God I am still happy about the call and though the response was difficult, I have never had doubts or second thoughts. Our God is a faithful God proof against all, and if I had to respond today I would say an even more convinced “yes”. The gift of a vocation is great and fortunately we will have eternity to sing grateful love.
Who knows, Senator, whether we will have the joy of a personal meeting? Will you not come to Turin? We await you.
I am writing in the name of the Mother Prioress and the sisters and wish you all possible good from our whole sisterhood.
With most cordial greetings,

Sister Maria Teresa of the Divine Love


THE POOR CLARES OF THE SANTA CHIARA CONVENT OF PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION OF BISCEGLIE
Bisceglie, Bari

Thank you for the gift of your periodical

Dear Senator Giulio Andreotti,
The gift of your periodical has moved us deeply.
The thanks that your generosity and esteem for our institution merits, God will express to you with all those graces and charismas that your faith and noble heart merit. With our greetings, please accept our humble prayer that we raise to the Lord for you and your family.
With religious regards,

Sister Liliana Martina O.S.C., Abbess


DOMENICANS OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA COLOMBA
Perugia

A specific mission given in gift by the Giver of all good

Dear Senator,
we received with joy your letter to the cloistered nuns, dated February 2005, with the lovely news of the gift of the monthly magazine 30Days in the Church and in the World. Its content will be of great help to us, keeping us informed, with such healthy criteria, about what happens in the world, to gear us up in our prayer of intercession, with greater fervor, because this is our specific mission given in gift by the Giver of all good.
We are immensely grateful to you for this work undertaken. Certainly it will do good to many and will be one of the recompenses of the Lord on this earth, along with your public justification always followed by us with love and pain. Truth brought its just victory. May the Lord Jesus be blessed, in the path of whose Passion you trod for many years; we thank you for your appreciation; it is a very difficult thing to consider our mission in the world, often challenged by highly placed people. We thank you also for your Easter greetings which we return with sisterly affection and regard, wishing you increasing holiness in the risen Jesus Our Divine Savior.

Sister Ludovica Fasciglione O.P., Prioress


DOMENICANS OF THE “CORPUS DOMINI” CONVENT
Montefiore dell’ Aso, Ascoli Piceno

A sublime vocation

Dear Senator Andreotti,
We thank you with joy for the gift of subscription to the magazine 30Days. With this gesture you have given prominence to our sublime vocation; if the young knew our life and the joy the Lord makes felt in His service…
This much appreciated magazine brings all kinds of information to us. Thus our prayer for all of the world’s needs will be more the more committed.
Again we thank you greatly and with grateful soul assure you will be remembered in our prayers.
Most devoutly,

Sister Maria Teresa De Angelis and Community


BENEDICTINES OF THE CONVENT OF SAN PIETRO
Cagli, Pesaro

Our day passes in work, in silence, in prayer

Dear Senator,
We have received your magazine 30Days. We thank you very much… we don’t have other magazines, except for Avvenire. Our community lives only with the minimum pension. We are old nuns, four of whom are ill. So we receive your magazine with great interest and gratitude. There are many beautiful and instructive things. Thank you! Our life even with large and small difficulties passes serenely and tranquilly… there is God who thinks of us… We have given our life with love for Him and the brothers who find themselves struggling in the world. In silence we raise our prayer to God particularly for those who turn to us for intercession and for those who must battle and sacrifice themselves for us and for the well being of the nation. Our day passes in work, silence, prayer. We assure you of our closeness in remembrance and the fervent supplication that the Lord will bless you, along with your work and your giving of yourself for others.
We thank you for the Easter wishes which we return with true feeling.

The Benedictine nuns
POOR CLARES OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA CHIARA
Cortona, Arezzo

Our spiritual collaboration

Dear Senator, may God grant you peace!
I refer to your letter of February 2005 that accompanied the monthly magazine 30Days and first of all, along with my sisters, wish to thank you for the welcome gift.
We read with great interest the February edition and just yesterday that of March arrived. Again heartfelt thanks!
Aware of our mission in the Church and faithful to the charisma of Father Saint Francis and of Mother Saint Clare, we urgently feel the invitation to accompany you with prayer and we accept it as a challenge full of love for that part of the contemporary world that tends to secularism and desecration, not only of religious and evangelical values, but also of human ones.
Humbly but with strength and conviction we again assume that which we joyously professed before the Church: the priority of prayer and contemplation, the witness of the presence of God, One and Triune, in creation and history, and unconditioned love for every creature. This spiritual collaboration that we consider primary and irreplaceable can also, if you think it opportune, generate in the future other forms of collaboration in ways to be eventually agreed upon and developed together. From the silence of the cloister the voice is raised to wish you a Holy Easter, when the heart in wonder and joy can sing again: the Lord is truly risen alleluia!
With esteem,

Sister Maria Chiara Stucchi, Abbess


POOR CLARES OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA CHIARA
San Severino Marche, Macerata

To get the genuine face
of our communities better known

Dear Editorial Staff,
We have received the gift copy of your magazine and wish to express our gratitude for this gesture of generous consideration in our regard. We likewise appreciated the space given to contemplative reality in the insert dedicated, in a particular way, to the Augustinians of Lecceto.
We feel we can respond positively to the two requests directed expressly to us as cloistered nuns, first of all by assuring our prayer for the precious work of research and promulgation of Christian values in the world today. Regarding direct collaboration and specific suggestions, we consider it equally important to get the genuine face of our sisterhoods better known freeing them from that patina of spiritualism or, on the other hand, of irrelevance that often accompanies the word “convent”.
Two years ago our community set up a small site that aims at presenting our form of life in the most direct and simple form possible (www.clarissesanseverino.it). But it has to do with a path that proceeds by trial and that remains attentive to the signs of the times through uninterrupted listening to the human and spiritual “oscillations” that vibrate around us.
Returning the wish for a happy Resurrection Feastday, we offer our sisterly greeting of “Peace and good things”!

The Poor Sisters of Saint Clare


CARMELITES OF THE “REGINA CARMELI” CONVENT
Monte San Quirico, Lucca

We read you happily

Dear Senator,
In the name of the Mother Prioress and fellow sisters I write to convey to you a big, deeply felt thank you for sending your magazine 30Days to our community.
We are reading it, happy to have some genuine news, among quantities that arrive… Knowing from whom it comes we accept it with gratitude.
The older nuns know your name and your political work well. All of us followed the often painful events of your life and we prayed for you.
We assure you of our prayerful help – then if we have the possibility or the capacity, we could also send some contribution to your magazine. Meanwhile please accept our deep thanks and most fervent wishes for a holy Easter. We ask the Lord to bless you along with all your dear ones and to make your work fruitful,
With esteem and gratitude, most devoutly,

Sister Teresa of Jesus O.C.D.


PASSIONISTS OF THE LORETO CONVENT
Loreto, Ancona

Tell the truth with courage and charity

Dear Mister President Senator Andreotti,
We greatly appreciated the magazine 30Days that you kindly sent to us free and thank you for this precious gift and for the esteem and confidence you nurture for us cloistered nuns. Willingly we commit ourselves to sustaining you and your collaborators with our prayer in the precious work of communication and training that you carry out with competence and with particular attention to religious values. In this world of ours, often disoriented and divided, we have need of a good press and especially of witnesses who know how to tell the truth, with courage and charity.
We too entrust ourselves to your prayer so that we may truly be a sign of the love of Jesus crucified in the world. Wishing you and your collaborators our most cordial greetings, we renew best wishes to all for every good in the Lord and especially to live always the great mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus with greater awareness.
Happy Easter in the joy of the risen Lord. Always united in prayer.
With devout regards,

Sister Gabriella De Bon, Superior, and fellow sisters


VISITATIONISTS OF THE CONVENT OF SAN PANCRAZIO
Saltocchio per San Pancrazio, Lucca

An intelligent and sure source
of information

Dear Senator,
we also wish to join with our fellow sisters in the cloistered convents to thank you for the welcome gift you ddecided to make us through the subscription to the magazine directed by you. We truly have need of an intelligent and sure source of information that will inform us with impartiality about the most significant world events, those that concern us from close up at least, and have more detailed news about important personalities. We also appreciated your letter full of understanding for our cloistered life.
Of the two contributions that you ask, we can without doubt assure you of the first because we are here with the precise task of praying for all and especially for those who ask us to. With regard to the second, we are happy for the esteem shown us, but think it too difficult to put it into practice given our smallness.
Thanking you again, we assure you of our remembrance and wish you and your collaborators happiness in this very meritorious good work.
May the Lord bless and reward you.
Yours truly and affectionately,

Mother and Sisters
of the Visitation of San Pancrazio


FRANCISCAN POOR CLARES OF THE CONVENT
OF SANTA CATERINA
Foligno, Perugia

The Father makes us rejoice
in your friendship and fondness

Dear Senator Giulio Andreotti,
it is reason of great joy for us to know that we can resume our contacts with you who were always for us, the Poor Clares of Foligno, a brother, a friend, a solicitous father.
The Lord and the Virgin Mary know how much we importuned them in the long years of your painful calvary… You can imagine with what relief and consolation we greeted the day of your victory! Your attitude of faith and Christian acceptance of the ordeal was for all of us a reason for edification, and we thank the Father who allows us to enjoy your friendship and fondness. We are certain that you clearly believe that our prayer for all your intentions is constant and fervent. We wish to thank you also for this latest gesture: the subscription to 30Days which we read with profit and the tranquil certainty of having secure news, capable of forming a righteous conscience. Only that we are sorry not to have received the letter written by you to all the cloistered sisters! We found out about it by reading the magazine and the testimonies of the sisters! How can we thank you for so much generosity and solicitude? We will do so in the way best suited to us: at the feet of the Eucharistic Jesus. In our little church perpetual adoration is made and every hour there is a Poor Clare before Jesus in adoration and supplication for humanity and for all the particular intentions entrusted to our prayer.
We trust always in the help of the Lord for your life and initiatives.
We greet you cordially hoping to hear from you soon,

Sister Agnese Marconi O.S.C., Abbess


BENEDICTINES OF THE CONVENT OF THE ADORATION
OF THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT
Piedmonte Matese, Caserta

The Lord called us without any merit
of ours to be a sign of that Kingdom
that we await with joy

Illustrious Senator Andreotti, We were very grateful for the gift you made to our small community, and everyone, from the most “cultured” to the most “simple”, love to read the magazine directed by you: I think it is the best one can hope for from a publication!
Our vocation as adorers of the Most Holy Sacrament is grafted into the centuries old Benedictine monastic experience. There is not a more beautiful vocation! Our Mother Foundress, Maria Mectilde – Catherine de Bar –, wished that her daughters should spend their lives for the glory of the Most Holy Sacrament. The perpetual adoration of the Eucharist makes us “victims”, united to Jesus the only true victim of love.
Prayer and work punctuate our day, as Saint Benedict wisely disposes in his rule.
The ideal is great, our reply always inadequate, but the gratitude to the Lord is without limits because he called us, without any merit of ours, to serve him and to be a “sign” of that Kingdom that we await with joy, placing nothing before the love for Christ.
AUGUSTINIANS OF THE CORPUS DOMINI CONVENT
Cento, Ferrara

An important anniversary: the hundred years of the Corpus Domini convent

Illustrious Senator Andreotti, We wish to thank you for the surprise of your kind sending of the magazine 30Days directed by you: along with your letter, it was and is most welcomed by all the sisters.
We are a small community of Augustinian nuns who this year live two important events: the first centenary of our community in the town of Cento – our mothers transferred there from Modena in 1905 – ; the fifty years of daily daytime adoration of the Most Holy sacrament, which was instituted in 1955.
Specifically to celebrate these anniversaries we have written a small guide and a book (still being prepared) in which to remember and share our life. We are happy to send you a copy of the guide which is already published.
We assure you of our remembrance in prayer, of you and all your collaborators.
Most devoutly in Christ Jesus,

Sister Maria Giuliana O.S.A. and community


BENEDICTINES OF THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT
OF THE CONVENT OF SAINT PETER
Montefiascone, Viterbo

Chi prega si salva (Who prays is saved) to learn the Italian language

First of all we want to thank you for the gift of the magazine 30Days which you wanted to make to nuns. We appreciate it greatly and we find its articles very interesting.
We keep it on the community table until the next one arrives, so that all may have a chance to see it.
We are a small community but full of life in living the real charisma of Benedictines and adorers of the Most Holy Sacrament. In particular, this Eucharistic year, a wonderful gift made to us by the great Pope John Paul II, sees us even more involved in praying for the most urgent needs of humanity. Even though, because of age, we are having a little difficulty in earning our bread, and helping those who knock on our door, we thank the Lord for having sent us three young Ecuadorians with the desire to follow Christ in our charisma.
With their difficulty in learning Italian we want to help them with the book of prayers Chi prega si salva, well-structured, that came with the magazine. We wish to request, if possible, that you send us other copies also for future vocations that we hope will be numerous.
May the Lord recompense you for all you do to help the religious and for what you can do for us personally and we send our respectful greetings.
Mother prioress and the community,
Sister Maria Matilde Imperatori O.S.B.