All is ready for Assisi Pax Mundi 2023. The tenth edition of the International Festival of Sacred Franciscan Music is going to start: from the 19th to the 22nd of October of 2023 the Franciscan places will be the exceptional theatre of this moment of music and meeting. The aim of the event is that of the dialogue through the music.
“And the Word became flesh” (John 1,14): this is the theme of the tenth edition of Assisi Pax Mundi that is promoted by the four Franciscan Families. According to Saint Francis message, all participants in the event will dialogue together around this theme.
Father Matteo Ferraldeschi, Franciscan friar minor and director of the Choir of the Porziuncola, explains: “All the groups, with their programs, will talk about the mystery of God who became a man and dwelt among us”.
The festival will bring to Assisi 12 choral groups coming from different part of Italy and of the world, with more than 250 participants, eight concerts and a Solemn Mess. Concerts will take place at different moments of the day in the Franciscan places and their surroundings. The final concert will be the event’s crowning moment: all participating groups will attend it. The Festival will end with the Solemn Eucharist Celebration at the Saint Francis Upper Basilica and with the performance of the Song of the Creatures by F. Domenico Stella. All the appointments will be free and open to everyone.
Father Peter Hrdy convent OFM, director of the Chapel Choir of the Papal Basilica of St Francis, reveals us that the festival will start with an exceptional preview during which it will be executed the Mess for the Peace: this is particularly important in this historical period. The date is Saturday the 14th of October at 9 p.m. in the Saint Francis Upper Basilica in Assisi with the Choir and the Orchestra of the Avangart Foundation and the “Olsztyński Chór Bel Canto” Choir (Poland).
Assisi Pax Mundi will also offer to you a special final event, a moment of meeting and dialogue: the Veritas Choir coming from Tokyo will perform together with the Chapel Choir of the Papal Basilica of Saint Francis.
With this event, that it is strongly desired by the Franciscan Families, Assisi continues to promote and spread the culture of the dialogue thanks to its particular attitude in promoting the peace and the respect among people: a culture that is intended to accept you all who follow St Francis and St Clare’s example.
Assisi Pax Mundi, organized the Franciscan Families of Assisi with the cooperation of the Chapel Choir of the Saint Francis Papal Basilica, reaches its tenth edition and its aim is to offer a moment of dialogue, communion and peace. The artists who are going to participate in it in the beautiful frame work of the seraphic city, will have the possibility to live authentic moments of sharing with other friends who have the same love and passion for music in order to enrich each other from the human, spiritual and cultural point of view.
This year the Franciscan Families will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Later Rule and of the well-known Greccio’s Crib: in 1223, in order to celebrate Christmas, Saint Francis wanted to represent the Baby who was born in Bethlehem and to show us the difficulties his family had because of the lack of all the things that an infant may need, he also want to show us how He was put in a manger with straw (FF 468). The deep desire to faithfully live the Gospel led Saint Francis to represent the misery and the humility of God incarnating in a child with that Nativity scene. In fact, He meditated on the Lord’s Words and he never loose sight of Its works. But the humility of the Incarnation and the charity of the Passion were so deeply impressed in its memory that he thought with difficulty to other (FF467).
In this tenth edition of Assisi Pax Mundi, the Families propose us to contemplate through the music the mystery of “the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us”.