The first three years of our ministry have been years of intense activity. In the following points you will be able to see the efforts, successes and also the frustrations we experienced. We wish to share these experience with all of you, not just out of obligation but of necessity, since we need to know the opinion of this Chapter on what we have done. We also need new initiatives, where necessary, to correct past errors, and new proposals and a fresh impulse to help us in our task -- if you consider us worthy to continue, with your necessary, indeed indispensable co-operation and commitment. You know that Chapters bear the highest responsibility for the animation, government and guidance of the Order, through the decisions they consider necessary so that the SFO, relying on God's help and attentive to the workings of his Holy Spirit, may live out its calling and mission ever more intensely and responsibly.

We were able to witness the continued growth and maturation of the National Councils in terms of the importance they properly give to formation, on which depends the future of the SFO in the world and the Church of today. The national Chapters show an admirable concern to provide teams of suitable people who can identify and communicate the basic principles of formation which our Order needs at the present time. In many parts of the world, where the economic situation of the country allows it, we have found technologically innovative methods and tools being used.

We are seeing a gradual awareness of a sense of the mission we are called to, and of the absolute need for us to be present in the domain of public life by means of courageous initiatives that are properly our own and not simply tacked on to what is done by other members of our Family in the Church. We have witnessed a variety of initiatives taking concrete shape in the plans and actions of many National Fraternities.

I will simply point out that "something is moving" and provoking significant change in the SFO and in its awareness that it must "be present" in public life, individually and communally, through the witness of its life and also through concrete initiatives that are consistent with our faith and vocation, as the Rule invites us to be. Such change was encouraged by the Chpter of 2002. There is a substantial group of national and regional councils, as well as many local fraternities and individual brothers and sisters, who are working seriously to overcome the temptation of being "closed in" and living in a spiritual dimension that is more inward-looking than directed outwards. This is a funamentally important subject which this Chapter will have to consider in depth and breadth.

The responsability of communicating their particular vocation to young people, and the sense of commitment to share with them their own experience of evangelical fraternal life, are growing greatly. So too is there greater clarity regarding the various possibilities of integrating young people -- who are increasingly older -- into the SFO. And so, several National Fraternities -- those where a a clear choice has been made to offer the secular Franciscan life to young people, providing them with their own areas of activity and a type of formation geared to their needs -- show understanding, generosity and openness in accepting that the yopung people's ways of expressing and living the gospel fraternity put forward and lived by Francis of Assisi will be different to those of adults and especially to those of old people. There is an ever greater interest and desire to see the Rule of the SFO as a document that inspires their Christian life and as a freely chosen life-project.

Many fraternities, not only but especially local ones, lack spiritual assistance. And although this subject will be amply dealt with in the Report of the CSA, it is still a responsibility of the CISFO Presidency to make sure that assistance and pastoral care are available, both to the SFO and to Jufra.
Every time we have been present in various countries we have explained the different possibilities offered by the Constitutions today, so that the major superiors of the First Order and TOR may provide assistance to all canonically established fraternities in their regions, and may exercise pastoral care to ensure those aspects which the Church has granted by apostolic privilege.

To conclude this Report, it only remains for us now to thank all those who have cooperated in any way with the Presidency to make it possible for us to serve the international Fraternity. Especially I thank the international Councillors, who have been very aware of their responsibilities and have enabled our brothers and sisters in so many countries to look with confidence to this body, charged with the animation and guidance of our Order. From our sisters and brothers on the occasion of our visits and our presence at various events we have received love and trust. They have aroused in us the energy, the hope and the immense enjoyment that come from experiencing brotherhood in all its concreteness, wherever in the world the SFO is present. Our brothers and sisters have given meaning to our service, which would not have been possible without their prayer, support and overflowing affection.

An evening of songs and dances was prepared by the SFO of Italy.