Karram Margaret

Margaret Karram is the third President of the Focolare Movement, elected on February 1, 2021, by the General Assembly. Coming from a Christian-Arab family, she developed a strong interreligious openness from a young age: in 1977, at fourteen, she encountered the Movement that would become her vocation.

She studied Judaism at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and, since 2002, served as co-responsible for the Movement in the Holy Land (Israel and Palestine), collaborating with interreligious dialogue commissions and the Coordinating Inter-Religious Council in Israel.

In 2013, she received the Mount Zion Award for Reconciliation, together with Jewish scholar Yisca Harani, for her commitment to interfaith dialogue. In 2014, as the only woman to recite the Prayer for Peace of St. Francis at the Vatican in the presence of Pope Francis, Shimon Peres, and Mahmoud Abbas, she was awarded the International Santa Rita Prize for promoting dialogue among Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

In 2014, she moved to Italy and took on leadership roles at the International Center of the Focolare Movement, focusing on dialogue with ecclesial movements and new communities.

As President of the Movement, she promotes intercultural understanding, the theme of “closeness” (for 2025), and peace through conferences, contributions to the 2023‑24 Synod, and international summits such as the one in Istanbul in 2022