This is the eminent group among those born from the movement, whose origins and aims it shares. It was recognized as a Lay Association of Pontifical Right on February 11, 1982. The decree of approval of the Fraternity's request for recognition reads that the Holy Father himself was "benevolently pleased to encourage the Pontifical Council for the Laity" that the recognition procedure might have a positive outcome. The letter accompanying the decree, signed by Cardinal Opilio Rossi, recognizes that the Fraternity of CL's contribution to the Church in her work of evangelization is "of outstanding importance and pastoral urgency," especially in "distant" de-Christianized areas where "the basic principles of human life and social interchange are at stake." The ecclesial nature of the Association, the letter concludes, makes obvious its "full cooperation and communion with the Bishops, headed by the supreme Pastor of the Church," down to the pastoral life of the diocese, to which it offers "its experie nce and contribution."

This recognition from the Pontifical Council for the Laity amounted to de facto approval of the educational experience of CL.

The first "Fraternity" groups were formed around the mid-1970s at the initiative of some former university students who wanted to go more deeply into what it means to belong to the Church, also within the conditions of adult life and the responsibilities it brings, in communion with others.

Today the Fraternity counts more than 44,000 men and women who have made the decision to commit themselves to a way of life that supports the path to holiness, acknowledged as the true aim of existence. The life of the Fraternity normally takes place through the free formation of groups who consider that commitment to be the reason for their friendship and sharing.

Belonging to the Fraternity calls for a minimal rule of personal ascesis, daily moments of prayer, participation in encounters of spiritual formation including an annual retreat, and commitment to the support, financial and otherwise, of the charitable, missionary, and cultural initiatives promoted or sustained by the Fraternity.

Recent years have witnessed also in Italy and abroad the rise of Fraternity groups formed by diocesan priests (the first of these took the name of Studium Christi) who in this way intend to help each other pursue more deeply their vocation and the accomplishment of their mission.

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The very name of this Association summarizes its purpose and meaning. It unites those persons in CL who have made a choice to dedicate themselves to God on a path marked by the virtue which the Church calls "virginity."

In 1988 it received juridical recognition as an Ecclesial Association by the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

The life of its members (lay men and women who normally live in houses made up of either men or women, following a rule of group living and personal ascesis) is governed by the call to contemplation, understood as the constant memory of Christ, and of mission, especially in the workplace. The conception of virginity is based on St. Paul's call to "possess as though not possessing." It is not in order to give up something that one makes a sacrifice, but rather to possess reality completely � analogous to the possession of Christ.

The Memores Domini (also known as �Adult Group�) are thus a potent call, to themselves, to the entire community and the workplaces where they operate, to the fact that the Lord creates and possesses reality and history and that everything is made up of Him.

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The "Fraternity of St Joseph" is a new reality that has arisen from the Communion and Liberation experience. It is made up of those who wish to dedicate their lives definitively to Christ in virginity, while remaining in their current life situations. Persons free of marriage bonds, because widowed or unmarried, have given rise to the first groups. These are men and women who wish to live a Christian life according to the Gospel tradition: in obedience, poverty, virginity, which are dimensions of faith, hope, and charity.

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The Fraternity of the Missionaries of St Charles Borromeo was born in September 1985 within Communion and Liberation as a priestly association. Encouraged by Fr Giussani, the young priests who formed it wished to support each other in their vocation and to respond ideally to the call to go into all the world expressed to the movement by John Paul II during the papal audience for the thirtieth anniversary of CL (September 29, 1984). The result was a missionary Fraternity, recognized in 1989 as a Society of Apostolic Life by Cardinal Ugo Poletti. Fraternity and mission are the governing words of this young community: to serve man in their availability to go wherever the needs of the Church and the life of the Movement require the presence of priests, taking the experience of the Movement into the whole world "through priestly missionary energy," in the words of its founder, Fr Massimo Camisasca, and to live a communion that is at the same time mutual aid and the method of a missionary presence in the various spheres: parish, school, university. The priests of the Fraternity live in "houses" that, scattered now over five continents, aim at being a sign to men of the companionship of Christ and an occasion for Him to be known from a new angle.

The priests of the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo are men who wish to belong to the Movement and to let themselves learn constantly from its charism. The Fraternity especially wants, by its very existence, to demonstrate that the charism granted to Fr Giussani is capable of educating and sustaining on the priestly path young men who have received or brought to fruition their vocation through the Movement and who are called to live their priesthood for the whole Church and for all their life.

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Falling under the charism imparted to Fr Giussani is also the religious Institute of the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption, established in 1993 by Pontifical Decree as an autonomous Institute, separate from that of the Little Sisters of the Assumption, which many young women from CL had entered from the 1960s onwards. Fr Giussani had in fact been deeply impressed by the simplicity and charity with which these nuns lived and had recognized an accord with his own way of understanding and living the Christian life; thus he directed toward this experience the vocations arising within the Movement that were most sensitive to the aspect of charity. Events within the Church after Vatican II led to a progressive differentiation, culminating in the birth of a new religious family, which finds in Fr Giussani the guide for living today the charism of its founder, Fr Stephen Pernet, who lived in France in the nineteenth century.

Struck by the material and moral misery in which workers' families lived and their distance from the Church, Fr Pernet created a work in which women who were living a total devotion to Christ in the religious life placed themselves at the service of families, sharing their concrete need by caring for the sick and helping in the home, witnessing in this way to the love of Christ present in the Church and reawakening faith by means of charity. This was from its beginnings an apostolic work, aimed, as its founder said, at "remaking a people for God."

The Sisters of Charity of the Assumption continue today the same mission, taking into account the changes in society that often make it necessary for them to work within the network of services set up by local administrations, but without losing their own identity. Their work is aimed at the family, through helping in the home, caring for the sick, for children in difficulty, the elderly, always with full respect for the dignity of the person, who is worthy of respect for the sole fact that he or she exists. The result is a fascinating adventure in sharing, in which man is given value because he was wanted and loved by Christ, and his story has a meaning because it has a destiny of hope. The Fraternity of CL is the sphere offered to families who reawaken to the Christian call to pursue the life of faith.

The Institute is today made up of some one hundred Sisters. The itinerary of their formation, while faithful to the characteristics of the religious life in the Church, follows closely in method and contents that of Memores Domini, recognizing in it the unparalleled richness that Fr Giussani's charism offers for articulation of the experience of virginity. The Sisters are present in Italy in Milan, Turin, Trieste, Rome, and Naples, and in Spain with the recently formed community of Cordoba.

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