Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Communion and Liberation, the reality of an event. And a great mission. Monsignor Massimo Camisasca, outstanding witness of the ecclesial movement founded by don Giussani, narrates his history with special devotion in three volumes presented by San PaoloPublishers. The author, first in change of Student Youth Gioventù Studentesca and then of CL and today Superior general of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo who was the founder, traces the vicissitudes of CL from its birth in 1954. In particular: the first volume Comunione e liberazione: Le origini (the beginning); the second, Comunione e Liberazione: La ripresa (second start); third, Comunione e Liberazione, Il riconoscimento (recognition). In these three volumes, accompanied by rich documentation written and photographic, the history of a man and the portrait of a people, in circa 50 years of civil and ecclesial Italian history.
“In the volume Il riconoscimento - monsignor Camisasca tells Fides- I underlined CL's awareness of its mission in the Church. «Go and carry to the whole world the truth, beauty and peace encountered in Christ the Redeemer». These words pronounced by John Paul II on 29 September 1984 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the foundation of CL -the author recalls- gave great impulse to the departure on mission of many young people. Today this ecclesial reality is all over the world. A month ago, 24 March Pope Benedict XVI, on the occasion of the Audience granted to the movement in St Peter's Square, referring to the mandate of his beloved predecessor, said: «Fr Giussani made those words the programme of the whole Movement, and for Communion and Liberation it was the beginning of a missionary season that took you to 80 countries. Today, I invite you to continue along this path, with a deep faith, personalized and solidly rooted in the living Body of Christ, the Church, which guarantees the contemporaneousness of Jesus among us.».” “When I began writing the first volume, Le origini -don Camisasca continues- I could not fail to start from don Giussani. So I spoke of his happy childhood, the years of formation at the seminary, the glorious decade of GS. A story which started from his biography, and opened to encompass the social and cultural environment of the times.”
“In the second volume, La ripresa - the author concludes- the dominant note is instead represented by the difficulty to rind again a dimension in a Milan, an Italy (1969/1976,ndr) crossed by parades, shaken by revolutionary slogans, bomb blasts, the dead. A series of events in which don Giussani found an answer, which was to become the pivot of all his teaching: salvation can come only from the Christian communion, understood in the totally new way of viewing life which comes from above, is born of the faith, and from faith draws its attitude to man and to the world, and is the only rule of life ”.
The work of monsignor Camisasca will be presented on 28 April at 5pm in the Sala della Protomoteca del Campidoglio in the presence of the author, Giuliano Ferrara, editor of Il foglio, Giancarlo Cesana, docent Medicine of Labour at Milan University, and Angiolino Lonardi, director of Raiutile television programme. (P.P. Agenzia Fides 27/04/2007)
