VATICAN - "As long as Christ is announced". The missionary heart of Albino Luciani

by Gianni Valente
"Missionaries are those who pull the cart of the Church. Those who pull the cart are those who ask for the places of fatigue and risk". This is what Albino Luciani repeated to his sister Antonia, many years before he was elected pope. She told it herself in "My Brother Albino", the volume in which she narrated the memories of the family life of Pope John Paul I. In the testimony given in this book - collected in 2003 by Stefania Falasca, vice-postulator of the Cause for the canonization of Pope Luciani - Antonia, who died in 2009, had also described in a few words the intimate attraction that her brother felt for the missionary experience: "Albino had the mission in his heart. So much so that, even when he was Patriarch of Venice, he confided to me on several occasions his desire to become a missionary". Albino always told Antonia, called Nina, that "one of his favorite saints was Francis Xavier". And he confides to him how impressed he was by the choice of Paul-Émile Léger, the Sulpician cardinal who left the direction of the Canadian archdiocese of Montreal to settle in Cameroon and work with handicapped children in 1967.
Albino Luciani will be proclaimed blessed in Rome on September 4. In view of the beatification, the Vatican John Paul I Foundation - created by Pope Francis in 2020 with the aim of preserving the heritage of the writings and promoting knowledge of the teachings of his predecessor - promoted a day of study entirely devoted to the Magisterium of Pope Luciani, entitled:
"The six "we want". The Magisterium of John Paul I in the light of archival documents". The event will take place on Friday May 13 in Rome, at the Pontifical Gregorian University. The conference will be opened by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State and President of the John Paul I Foundation, and coordinated by Stefania Falasca, Vice President of the Vatican Foundation.
The day of studies, carried out in the light of the documentation of the private Albino Luciani Archives - now part of the Vatican Foundation - will also offer the opportunity to grasp the missionary openness perceptible in the sensus Ecclesiae of John Paul I , from the six "we want" of the Urbi et orbi message delivered by Pope Luciani the day after his election, on August 27, 1978. (...) (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 7/5/2022)

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