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Don Luigi Giussani Mons. Luigi Giussani Don Luigi Giussani |
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Don Luigi Giussani con el Santo Padre Mons. Luigi Cuissani with the Holy Father Don Luigi Giussani mit dem Heiligen Vater Fotos: clonline.org © 2005 |
ROME, P. Alberto Eronti. Yesterday, February 22, the founder of the Movement "Communion and Liberation", Mons. Luigi Giussani, died in Milan. The Movement founded by him in these moments of mourning the death of their founder, is accompanied by the sympathy and prayers of the Schoenstatt Movement.
I got to know him in September 1985, on behalf of the centenary celebrations of Father Kentenich, in Schoenstatt. Together with Dr. Roberto Formigoni, and Prof. Rocco Buttiglione, he participated in the festivities in Schoenstatt. The encounter and dialogue made us exclaim: "What a beautiful surprise to meet with a Movement that has so many contact points with the thinking and vision of Father Kentenich!"
From then on, many times we have had meetings with members of Communion and Liberation, as well as many dawns that found us still discussing enthusiastically about God, the Church, man and world.
Don Luigi Giussani.
Luigi Giussani was born in 1922 in Desio, a small town near Milan. At a very young age Luigi Giussani entered the diocesan seminary of Milan, continuing his studies and finally completing them at the theological school of Venegono. These were years of intense study and great discoveries. After ordination, Fr Giussani devoted himself to teaching at the seminary in VenegonoIn the middle of the 1950s, he left seminary teaching for high schools. For ten years, from 1954 to 1964, he taught at the Berchet classical high school in Milan. These were the years of the birth and dissemination of GS (Gioventù Studentesca, Student Youth)
From 1964 to 1990 he occupied the chair of Introductory Theology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
He is the founder, and until now headed the Communion and Liberation movement and is president of its General Council. He was also president of the Central Diakonia of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, an association recognized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity in 1982. He was the soul and guide for the experience of Memores Domini, a lay association, also recognized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity (1988), which unites members of CL who have made the choice to consecrate their lives to God in virginity.
He was a Consultant for the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Laity. From 1993, he ran the collection of books "Books of Christian Spirit", for the Rizzoli Publishing Company. In 1997, he edited a collection of religious CDs, with great success. In 1995, he received the International Award of Catholic Culture. He was author of numerous books and articles, translated into many languages, a spiritual guide for thousands of adolescents and adults.
Communion and Liberation
Comunión and Liberation is the Ecclesial Movement founded by Mons. Giussani in 1954 in the city of Milan. Today it is present in 70 countries.
The essence of the charism given to Communion and Liberation can be signaled by three factors.
- first of all, the announcement that God became man (the wonder, the reasonableness, the enthusiasm for this): "The Word was made flesh and dwells among us."
- secondly, the affirmation that this man Jesus of Nazareth dead and risen is a present event in a "sign" of "communion," i.e., of unity of a people guided, as a guarantee, by a living person, ultimately the Bishop of Rome;
- thirdly: only in God made man, man, therefore only in His presence and, thus only through in some way the experienceable form of His presence (therefore, ultimately only within the life of the Church) can man be truer and mankind be truly more human.
The Movement is centered in the core circles of the "Fraternity of Communion and Liberation", organized in life groups that meet for certain times to live brotherliness in community, to pray and educate themselves. The encounter with Christ and in Christ unites and frees.
The best known annual event is the so called "meeting" of Rimini. It is a week of encounters, talks, artistical presentations, a true cultural dialogue of faith and world, thinking, and reality. People from all over the world participate, members of the hierarchy of the church as well as experts in theology, philosophy, sociology, politics, and more. More than half a million attended last years Rimini Meeting. It is sure the most important cultural catholic event in Europe.
Testimony of Cardinal Ratzinger
"I got to know them in 1970, and for me it was a highly interesting surprise. I met with young people in full fervor for faith, without any touch of a tired, old Catholicism. Their faith was fresh, open, with the joy of believing and of having found Jesus and his church. So I understood that this was a new beginning, that this was a renewed faith that would open the doors towards a different future of the church on its pilgrimage through time."
The funeral for Mons. Luigi Giussani will be held Thursday, February 24, at 3.00 PM in the cathedral of Milan, presided by Cardinal Ratzinger as special envoy of the Pope.