Holy Father Establishes Fratelli Tutti Vatican Foundation

The Holy Father Francis, by the Chirograph of December 8, 2021, has established the Fratelli tutti Vatican Foundation, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law and the Fundamental Law of Vatican City State, thus meeting the proposal of His Eminence Mauro Gambetti to create an entity intended to support the mission of the Fabric of Saint Peter.

The Foundation’s mission areas are

1. to support and design pathways of art and faith;

2. to invest in cultural and spiritual formation through events, experiences, pathways, and spiritual exercises;

3. to promote dialogue with cultures and other religions on the themes of the Pontiff’s latest encyclicals, in order to build a “social alliance”.

The aims of the Foundation are included in Article 3 of the Statute:

“The Foundation aims at solidarity, formation, and dissemination of art, in particular, sacred art; it promotes synodality, the culture of fraternity, and dialogue. To this end, the Foundation:

I. promotes holistic formation, attentive to the spiritual and cultural levels, to the community dimension, and to the commitment to service in the world;

II. promotes the experience of pilgrims through spiritual, cultural, and artistic itineraries in Saint Peter’s Basilica and in the spaces made available for the Fabric of Saint Peter;

III. organizes itineraries, events, and experiences to foster fraternity and social friendship between Churches, different religions, and between believers and non-believers;

IV. promotes the culture of peace in the various spheres of life, from the personal to the social and political dimensions;

V. fosters “new encounters” nourished by social dialogue, by a sense of social forgiveness, by the purification of memory, by the promotion of restorative justice as an alternative to social revenge;

VI. fosters initiatives aimed at encouraging the development of fraternal humanism, through the promotion of the principles of freedom, equality, and fraternity, conditions for building a “universal love” that recognizes and safeguards the dignity of persons;

VII. encourages projects for the care of creation, the protection of environmental resources, international solidarity, and social responsibility;

VIII. promotes social alliance, responsible entrepreneurship, social investment, humane and sustainable forms of work; integral ecology, sustainable development, ecological transition, health, and scientific and technological research, in the light of the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church;

IX. supports responsible communication, the truth of sources, and the credibility and reliability of those committed to building bridges;

X. in the symbolic embrace of the colonnade of Saint Peter’s Basilica, it includes the weakest people, the outsider, and the foreigner, the different and the marginalized, and the cultural and social frontiers in order to re-read the suffering of the world and offer solutions in the light of the Gospel and the papal Magisterium”.

In order to carry out its activities, the Foundation will be chaired by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, a nine-member Board of Directors, a single head, and a general secretary. The Foundation’s governing bodies will be: the General Council, composed of members of the Vatican Dicasteries concerned with the Foundation’s mission, and the Sustainability Committee, in which the Foundation’s benefactors are represented.

CHIROGRAPH OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS