For the Pope John XXIII Community, the Family Home means an educational and residential community entirely modelled on the natural family. The firm foundation of the family home are the two parental figures, one maternal, one paternal, who have chosen to share their life in a stable, ongoing, definitive and altruistic way with the people they have welcomed in, coming from different distressing situations. It was Father Benzi’s idea to “give a family to those without one” that led to the opening of the first family home in Coriano, a municipality near Rimini, on 3 July 1973.

This is the way the Community responds to the deepest and most essential need of those we welcome in, that being the need to feel loved by someone and the need to be useful and important to someone, in other words a significant relationships with a mother and father. The young people and adults welcomed in no longer feel mere recipients of charity but rather people chosen and valued by the parental figures.

Family homes welcome in all, irrespective of age or situation. The significant and highly individual relationship with the paternal and maternal figure and the relationships that form between the people welcomed in create a therapeutic environment that soothes and heals wounds, that regenerates through love and that reignites the flame of hope in people’s life.

In addition to the parental figures, a family home may also include other people providing help and partnership in different ways, such as young people doing voluntary civilian service, apprentices and university students on work experience programmes, Community associates during their PVV (Period of Vocational Verification), motivated volunteers, priests, people in holy orders, associations and others.

A family home is part of social fabric of the area in which it is based, always open to working in partnership with local private and public-sector social entities, but ever mindful of the spirit that moves and inspires it. The usefulness of family homes has enabled new ones to open up far and wide.

To date, APG23 family homes exist all over the world.

What makes APG23 Family Homes unique?

These are the special elements that make them unique and unlike any other reception centres.

1. The constant presence of the couple living full-time with their sons and daughters. The Family Home therefore combines all that is good about the family that welcomes them in with the professional skills of the mother and father who educate and bring up the children since they receive constant training.

2. The complementary nature of the welcome. APG23 family homes welcome in both children and adults, with different histories and problems. All those who live in a family home bring their own story and their value to all the others.

3. Direct sharing as the educational model. The choice for direct, daily sharing made in APG23 family homes creates bonds that tear marginalisation, loneliness and abandonment up by the roots. Every person feels important and useful for the others, stimulating them to take all the others to heart.

4. The association network. APG23 family homes are an integral part of the Pope John XXIII Community that expresses itself in different ways of living; open families, family homes, cooperatives and day centres, all able to provide different yet integrated responses to the needs of the people they welcome in and that are nourished by the choice in favour of the Faith.