According to the student's accounts it was a transforming experience they called the Baptism of the holy spirit.

This is how Catholic Charismatic Renewal emerged, a movement that promotes personal renewal in the grace of the holy spirit.

Oreste Pesare
Director, International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (Rome)
When we receive the Baptism in the holy church, the sacrament, we receive all the holy spirit, we receive the gift of the holy spirit, but many times we don't use this grace.  When you realize that you want to follow this experience, that you want to meet the holy spirit, you open this box and all the gifts that you already received in your sacraments come up and you can live a new life in the holy spirit and you can experience a new relationship with God.

The movement received pontifical recognition in 1993. Its newest director, Oreste Pesare, explains why the Vatican took so long to approve the movement.

Oreste Pesare
Director, International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (Rome)
Catholic charismatic renewal has historical roots in the Pentecostalism and so when in 1967, a first group of Catholics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania made the first experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit of course the Church was a little bit scared that some Protestantism could enter in the Catholic Church, so at the beginning it was a little bit difficult to enter, but the fruits of this new torrent of the Holy Spirit that were so big that step by step the church accepted more and more this new experience.

The charismatic movement helps individuals and groups that have different ways of expressing themselves and brings them together to worship God.

Oreste Pesare
Director, International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (Rome)
And in this way Charismatic Catholic would like to be a prophet for a new ecumenism, an ecumenism based on the love, loving each other, brothers and sisters, even though they are different. 

Pesare says that although charismatics receive natural and supernatural gifts, their wish is to promote the idea that God is omnipotent.

Oreste Pesare
Director, International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (Rome)
I always say I don't consider a charismatic one who speaks in tongues, or makes prophecies or heals people. Of course we believe in these charisms and we believe in these gifts, and the Lord is bringing back these charisms in the Church today, but first of all I feel that the real charismatic is able to love the diversity in the others.

From Rome, Oreste Pesares keeps in touch with the leaders of the movement around the world.

A movement that started with a small praying group of college students and that today has more than 100 million members in 235 countries.