What was intended to be a small meeting among friends to pray together blossomed into an event in which over 2000 people from all over Italy participated. The first “general chapter” of Wi-fi Monastery, as it was nicknamed, took place on 19 January in St. John Lateran Basilica, Rome, Italy. Organized by Costanza Miriano, a journalist and writer, the purpose of the meeting was “to bring together many seekers of God, each from his/her own particular path in life,” as she explains in her blog.
As a way of celebrating this unique initiative, the “Mother Church” of all the churches of Rome and of the whole world scheduled alternating moments of listening to competent input with moments of intense prayer. In his address to open the event, Auxiliary Bishop Gianrico Ruzza underscored the Wi-fi Monastery experience as an attempt to “penetrate the folds of society so as to seek and get to know the beauty and the truth of God and start afresh from his ‘insane’ love for us.” “Ceaseless prayer is a choice that goes against the current,” he continued, “but it is prophetic and necessary because it gives soul, breath and spirit to an apathetic world that at times seems ugly. But it is a world that God loves.”