The 68th Frankfurt Book Fair held on 13-23 October 2016 at the Messe Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany drew over 277,000 visitors and trade visitors from all over the world. This year’s guests of honour were Flanders and the Netherlands. Recognized as the world's largest publishing industry event that features people from diverse sectors particularly writers, publishers, agents, as well as movie producers, the Frankfurt Book Fair has become a common trading ground for media, literary materials, and publishing licenses and rights. It is a place where participants exchange fresh perspectives, ideas, views, and thoughts on the area of publishing in the Paper and Paper Products, Printing & Publishing industries. The five-day fair gave publishers the opportunity to educate audiences as well as celebrate life and diversity of cultures made possible by the power of words on each page of a book. While everyone who comes to the fair is a book lover, the greatest challenge that confronts the Publishing industry is to reach out to people who are not book lovers.
Frankfurt Bookfair is the world's largest trade fair for books basically because more and more publishing companies come to participate in it every year. For the Frankfurt Bookfair 2016, twenty sisters representing Daughters of St. Paul Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Korea, Spain, Central Europe, East Africa, Philippines, and the United Kingdom were among the 142,300 trade visitors. It was a venue for the sisters to keep abreast of new trends, get to know new authors, meet publishers, establish publishing partnerships and build friendships. The sisters gathered on 18 October 2016, the day before the opening of the Book Fair, for the traditional presentation of significant productions of each circumscription. In addition, they also had an exchange of ideas for the upcoming Continental Meeting on Apostolate-Economy as envisioned by the General Government Planning for 2017-2018, focusing on the "creative moment, as a further stage of the global apostolic project." The sharing was facilitated by Sr. Natalia Maccari of SIA and Sr. Anna Caiazza, General Councilor on Apostolate. Sr. Noemi Bergamin, also of SIA, was with the group, too. The PMPT Province was represented by Sr. Purificacion Barrientos, Councilor on Apostolate; as well as Sr. Maricar Andamon (Marketing) and Sr. Rhodora Alarcon (Editorial).
During the encounter, Sr. Anna Caiazza posted the following challenges to the sisters: first, to reflect on the gift of the call that they have received. According to Sr. Anna, the sisters are to take time to ask themselves for what they were called for; and second, to consider strategic planning which will help identify priorities. She urged the sisters never to reduce the number of their productions of new titles of books and other materials for each month or year because in the publishing world only Pauline products must occupy that particular space reserved solely for Pauline products.
For the sisters, the whole experience was a celebration of the gift of the Pauline Apostolate. With all the glamour of the Frankfurt Bookfair, amidst the challenges and tensions brought about by diversity of cultures and beliefs, confusion among peoples, threats to family life and human dignity, etc.; the Pauline Apostle confidently strains forward keeping constantly alive Father Founder James Alberione’s words, “give the charity of the truth,” because “the truth is the greatest charity.”