Luigi Giussani: Mgr Luigi Giussani, who was the founder of the Catholic ecclesial movement, Communion and Liberation, died at his Milan residence on February 22nd. He was 82.
It is said that his mother Angela in Milan, where he was born on October 15th, 1922, transmitted to him a simple religiosity. "How beautiful the world is and how great God is," she told him.
His father, Beniamino, was an artist and anarchist-
socialist. From him, it is said, Giussani learned the desire for justice and the love of beauty, painting, poetry and music.
He was ordained a priest in 1945 and, after teaching at the Berchet school in Milan, he became a professor of theology at the Catholic University in the city.
Last October marked the 50th anniversary of the Student Youth initiative, which Fr Giussani founded at the Berchet School. That group eventually became Communion and Liberation, a name that was first used in 1969.
It summarised the conviction that Christianity, lived in communion, is the foundation of man's genuine liberation.
In 1982 the Vatican's Council for the Laity recognised Communion and Liberation as an association of pontifical right. Today it is followed by tens of thousands in Italy and has spread to over 75 countries throughout the world, including Ireland.
Every year the movement holds what is known as "The Meeting" at Rimini, with an average of 500,000 visitors.
It is one of the best-attended summer festivals of culture, seminars, music and entertainment in the world.
In Ireland, Communion and Liberation groups meet regularly in the suburbs of Dublin and the housing estates of Naas, following the intuition of Mgr Giussani that Christianity is "an encounter, a story of love and an event, rather than a set of dogmas" in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger at his funeral.
The same groups organise a Way of the Cross in Dublin's Phoenix Park each Good Friday, as well as other "public" events.
The object of this ecclesial movement is the Christian education of its followers, and co-operation with the mission of the church in all realms of contemporary society.
In a letter last February Pope John Paul said to Mgr Giussani that Communion and Liberation "can justly be considered, together with a great variety of other associations and new communities, as one of the shoots of the promising 'spring' inspired by the Holy Spirit in the last 50 years."
Mgr Giussani's numerous books were presented to the United Nations in New York in 1997, as written by "a particularly inspired representative of man's religious sense."
His funeral was televised live on Italian TV. Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi led 10,000 mourners in Milan's cathedral at the funeral Mass, while another 30,000 stood outside in the wind and rain for over two hours.
A special message was sent by the ailing Pope, who was represented at the funeral by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Pope John Paul wrote that he was "overcome by emotion" when he learned of Mgr Giussani's death.
He said the entirety of Mgr Giussani's apostolic action could be summarised "in the candid and determined invitation that he was able to extend to all those who approached him to a personal encounter with Christ, as his work was the full and definitive answer to the most profound expectations of the human heart."
In the funeral homily, Cardinal Ratzinger said "Fr Giussani grew up in a family that had little bread but a lot of music. But such beauty was not enough for him for he wanted a greater beauty, an infinite beauty, and found it in
Christ.
"He taught us that true freedom needs communion. Freedom for the self alone kills communion and so, to be true, freedom must be in communion with the truth," he said.
Luigi Giussani: born 1922; died February 22nd, 2005