Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - “One day - said Rev. Filippo Santoro in the 1980s a simple priest in Puglia - don Giussani came to Puglia for a series of meetings and I was sent to fetch him at the airport. In the car he said, quite out of the blue: “Would you go on mission to Brazil?”. I replied: “Of course if you are the one to ask me and providing you take care of CL in Puglia”. Don Giussani repeated his question and explained that the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro had asked him for a priest and he felt it was important to give a positive reply to a Bishop. So I set out for Brazil. For don Giussani mission was very important. I remember how he used to say that he would empty all the CL communities in Italy and send all of us on mission.
So in 1984 I arrived in Brazil. With me and many other people, new CL communities formed all over South America. For a while I taught at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro and then I was appointed auxiliary Bishop in Rio and in Petropolis.
An old friendship linked the life of don Luigi Giussani with that of Rev. Filippo Santoro, today Bishop of Tuscamia in Brazil. A friendship born while Santoro was studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University. “It was 1971 - Santoro told Fides - and I had almost finished my studies in theology. I was living at the Capranica College where Don Guissani was invited to give a retreat. After each meditation I went to speak with don Giussani and I told him how amazed I was to find that his words of revealed that the great truths of Christianity could be lived and experienced every day. Every day at the Gregorian I listened to lessons given by important theologians and during my meetings with don Giussani I saw that what the professors taught could become flesh, become reality and that it is always possible to live the beauty of Christianity. After I had become a priest don Giussani asked me to take charge of the CL movement in the Puglia region and invited me to take part in regular meetings for CL leaders, “so we can deepen our friendship” was how he put it. So he had called me not to play a role in organisation but rather to live communion with him, a friendship offered to help both of us stand before Christ”.
I have never lived my priesthood as an alternative to Communion and Liberation. And Don Guissani, in fact, taught me that every man is called to the vocation of virginity which means having the same affective capacity as Jesus. My vocation then is to live virginity, to adopt a new possession of reality, the same possession as Christ.
Today I am a Bishop and as a member of Communion and Liberation I am able to bring out the many different experiences of the Church in Brazil in one pastoral plan : holiness, communion and mission. (P.L.R.) (Agenzia Fides 26/02/2005 - Righe 34; Parole 479)
