Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare Movement, has taken part in the launch in Jerusalem of a new initiative dedicated to dialogue, reconciliation and peace.
At a particularly painful time for the Holy Land, a new Forum has been established to explore what its founders describe as the universal vocation of Jerusalem.
Within Your Gates: The Forum for the Universal Vocation of Jerusalem was officially launched in Jerusalem on 7 September 2026. Promoted by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and developed in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame’s academic centre in Jerusalem, the Forum brings together scholars, religious leaders, representatives of civil society and people from different communities and disciplines.
Among the members of its Board of Promoters is Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare Movement.
The initiative seeks to create a space in which the wounds and complexities of Jerusalem can be faced realistically, while opening new perspectives for the future. Its work will place the common good of the city’s inhabitants at its centre and explore questions including the theological and human significance of Jerusalem, the language of conflict and reconciliation and the possibilities for action in situations marked by profound limitations.
Jerusalem’s universal vocation
Jerusalem is a city of profound significance for Jews, Christians and Muslims. It is also a place marked by conflict, competing claims and painful histories.
At the heart of the new Forum is the conviction that Jerusalem has a vocation that reaches beyond any one community.
Cardinal Pizzaballa has expressed this vision in terms of Jerusalem becoming an image and prophecy of the reconciliation and peace desired by God for the whole human family. The Forum therefore seeks to reflect on the future of the city while remaining firmly rooted in the concrete realities facing its people today.
The initiative grew out of conversations begun in response to the worsening situation in the Holy Land. From 2024, these developed into five workshops over two years, bringing together scholars and practitioners from different religious and disciplinary backgrounds. The experience led to the recognition of the need for a more permanent space where this work of encounter and reflection could continue.
Learning to listen
One of the strongest themes emerging from the Forum is the importance of listening.
Daniel Schwake, who leads the Forum, has explained that its origins lay in an invitation to listen to others deeply and compassionately, without attitudes of moral superiority, but with a willingness to learn.
The Forum does not claim to offer political solutions or a single voice. Rather, it aims to bring people together to seek truth rooted in the reality and history of all those involved.
This approach is particularly significant in Jerusalem, where the same places can carry very different religious, historical and emotional meanings for different communities.
The Forum’s first area of reflection has therefore been language: how words can become weapons of division and exclusion, but can also become instruments of understanding and openness.
At a time when public debate is increasingly polarised, this commitment to listening and to finding new ways of speaking with and about one another is an important part of the search for reconciliation.
“This initiative truly touches my heart”
For Margaret Karram, participation in the Forum has a deeply personal significance.
Having lived in Jerusalem for 24 years, she returned to the Holy City for the inauguration of Within Your Gates. Speaking about the initiative, she said: “This initiative truly touches my heart.”
The Forum, she explained, aims to be an open space where people from different communities and backgrounds can meet and work together, with the ambitious but necessary objective of rediscovering Jerusalem’s universal mission as a city of reconciliation and peace for all humanity.
In an earlier statement on joining the Board of Promoters, Margaret said:
“In this painful moment for the Holy Land and so many other places in the world, we need spaces where people of different backgrounds and beliefs can meet, listen to one another, and seek new paths together.”
She expressed her deep honour at being part of the Forum and said that the whole Focolare Movement wished to support its purpose through its experience and its daily commitment to building peace.
“It is a difficult journey,” she said, “but we believe that every authentic gesture of dialogue and fraternity can contribute to making it possible.”
A contribution to peace
The Forum’s organisers are realistic about the scale of the challenges facing Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Cardinal Pizzaballa has made clear that Within Your Gates will not change everything. But it hopes to make its own contribution by being a presence that continues to remind people that the Holy Land cannot belong to one community at the expense of another and that its future must be sought with the good of all its people in mind.
For the Focolare Movement, participation in this initiative is a concrete expression of its commitment to fraternity, dialogue and the building of peaceful relationships, including in situations marked by division and conflict.
The work of Within Your Gates recognises that peace requires more than political agreements. It also requires spaces where people can meet, listen and begin to understand realities different from their own.
At a time when division and violence can make such encounters seem increasingly difficult, the Forum represents a decision not to give up on dialogue.
Jerusalem’s story is one of extraordinary complexity and deep wounds. Yet it also carries a universal hope: that people with different histories, identities and beliefs might find ways of living together without allowing difference to become permanent division.
That is the challenging horizon towards which Within Your Gates now sets out.
As Margaret Karram’s words remind us, the journey will not be easy. But every authentic gesture of dialogue and fraternity can help make another future possible.
More information about the Forum can be found at Within Your Gates.