In caso di mancato recapito rinviare a Uff. Poste Roma Romanina per la restituzione al mittente previo addebito. If undelivered please return to sender, postage prepaid, via Romanina post office, Roma, Italy. En cas de non distribution, renvoyer pour restitution à lʼexpéditeur, en port dû, à: Ufficio Poste Roma Romanina, Italie “Come then, Lord Jesus... Come to me, seek me, find me, Take me in your arms, carry me” St Ambrose www.30giorni.it MENSILE SPED. IN ABB. POST. Tar. Economy Taxe Percue Tassa Riscossa Roma. ED. TRENTA GIORNI SOC. COOP. A R. L. ISSN 0897-2435 YEAR XXX NUMBER 5- 2012 $8 / € 5 nella Chiesa e nel mondo nella Chiesa e nel mondo In the Church and in the World Directed by Giulio Andreotti Directed by Giulio Andreotti In the Church and in the World
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YEAR XXX NUMBER 5 - 2012 $8 / € 5
nella Chiesa e nel mondo nella Chiesa e nel mondo
In the Church and in the WorldDirected by Giulio AndreottiDirected by Giulio AndreottiIn the Church and in the World
Valtellina reaches the milestone of 75 years of activity looking to the future with new, significant
prospects for growth, in Italy and around the world: born as a company operating in the telephone
network infrastructure, Valtellina is today a point of reference and system integrator in strategic
areas of development and progress. In all the areas and in the countries where it operates it ap-
plies the guiding values that have always distinguished it: great working abilities, seriousness,
strict adherence to agreements. Among the most important Bergamo companies in an absolute
sense, it has almost 1000 employees and demonstrates concretely how tradition and innovation
coexist in the principle of Quality.
Valtellina is 75 years old.Happy birthday, future.
Pierluca Azzaro, Francoise Marie Babinet, Pina Baglioni, Marie-Ange Beaugrand, Maurizio Benzi, Lorenzo Bianchi, Massimo Borghesi, Lucio Brunelli, Rodolfo Caporale, Lorenzo Cappelletti, Gianni Cardinale, Giuseppe Frangi, Silvia Kritzenberger, Walter Montini, Jane Nogara, Stefania Falasca, Stefano M. Paci, Felix Palacios, Tommaso Ricci, Giovanni Ricciardi
Special contributors
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio,Pietro Calogero, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran
3OGIORNI nella Chiesa e nel mondois published monthly and registered with the Court of Rome No 501 11/11/93. The masthead benefits from direct statecontributions, law of 7 August 1990, n. 250.
Publishers
Trenta Giorni soc. coop. a r.l.Via Vincenzo Manzini, 45 - 00173 Rome, Italy
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland/Foto Flury, Pontresina: Cover, p.35;Romano Siciliani: pp.11,18; Paolo Galosi: pp.16,38,43; Osservatore Romano: pp.17,18,20,34; Afp/Getty Images: p.19; Associated Press/LaPresse: pp.20,22,32,33; Alessandro Digaetano: p.21; Federico Roiter: pp.24,28; Photo taken from the book Con voie per voi, published by Cid/Gente Veneta: p.25; Valter Liotto: p. 27; By kind concession ofthe Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue: pp.32-33; Massimo Quattrucci:pp.37,44,45,46; Franco Cosimo Panini Publications: p.53; Scala, Florence: p.57.
3OGIORNInella Chiesa e nel mondo
Director Giulio Andreotti
N. 5 - 2012
p. 35
CUBA
Quien reza se salva and 30Díasare magnificent for a mission land
Havana, 1 March 2012
To the Piccola Via Charitable Association.Dear Brothers,Peace and health!I write from my beloved Cuba, a mission country, tothank you for the catechism [Quien reza se salva];30Días is also one of your splendid gifts. Both thecatechism and the magazine 30Días have a highlevel of Catholic teaching and information; they arewonderful for a mission land, particularly in ruralcommunities like those in which we work.
We also have a project – to which we gave thename of the Cuban Blessed José Olallo Valdés –through which we bring aid to families with disabledchildren, quadriplegics, or suffering from seriousdiseases. No one takes care of these families. Theyare twelve in all, for which I ask only your mercy, to-gether with that of Jesus; we need above all clean-ing materials and powdered milk.
Many times I have invited Mr Giulio Andreottiand his collaborators here to Cuba. I invite you too.In Cuba, the Italians are much loved and manypriests also work here.
Thanks for everything,
Sergio León Mendiboure, missionary
MEXICOPERPETUAL ADORATION SISTERS OF THE BLESSED
SACRAMENT OF OUR LADY OF LA ESPERANZA CONVENT
One hundred copies of Quien reza se salvafor my ‘little sheep’
Cotija, Michoacán de Ocampo, 9 March 2012
Praised be the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Esteemed Piccola Via CharitableAssociation,I greet you cordially wishing that the Peace of Christmay inundate your apostolate and each member ofthe Association.
Letters from all over the world • Letters from all ove
3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
“Whoever confesses well becomesholy”. “Well”, that is in accordance withwhat the Church requires to make a goodconfession. This insight accompaniedDon Giacomo Tantardini in the last yearsof his life. He often repeated that phrase:to friends, in homilies. An intuition, he ex-plained, that flourished after the death ofDon Luigi Giussani, as a small grace re-ceived. But that had its foundation in theattention that Don Giacomo always paidto the sacrament of confession. From theearly ’eighties, as an aid to his apostolateamong young people and adults, he hada small booklet printed, The sacramentof confession. To this booklet, in 2001, hewanted to add the simplest prayers ofthe Christian life. Thus was born Chi pre-ga si salva [Who prays is saved], translat-ed into several languages (French, Eng-lish, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Chi-nese) and didtributed around the world.In 2005, this small booklet of prayers hadthe privilege of receiving the preface of
the then Prefect of the Congre-gation for the Doctrine of theFaith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
who became PopeBenedict XVI. Chiprega si salva, re-
peated Don Giaco-mo, is the dearest,
most beautiful, mostimportant thing that
30Giorni ever did.
WHO PRAYS IS SAVED
6
73ODAYS - 5 - 2012
First of all, congratulations for your fine maga-zine 30Giorni that does so much good to souls. Allits topics strengthen us in faith, and there are manycontemplative souls to which it does great good. Iwill ask that your apostolate be blessed.
I thought a lot about what I’m going to say and havealways been uncertain whether to do so. I request thatyou grant me the charity of sending me one hundredcopies of Quien reza se salva, but I’m poor, I have nomoney. But, in the words of our Blessed Motherfounder, “I have a very rich Spouse...”. Trusting in Himand in His divine providence, I ask them for free. “HeWho is very rich, will reward you as only He can “. TellJesus that His spouse wants these books because shehas many little sheep who do not know how to pray ormake an examination of conscience for confession.
I can only offer you my poor prayers before theBlessed Sacrament day and night.
May Our Blessed Mother founder María Magdale-na de la Encarnación intercede for the Association.
May God reward you! Count on my prayers.
Sister María Iolanda de Jesús,perpetual adorer of the Most Holy Sacrament
PHILIPPINESCAPUCHIN POOR CLARES OF THE SANTA CLARA CONVENT
Who prays is savedas a gift for the faithful
Laoag City, 13 March 2012
Dear Senator Andreotti,Peace and good!We would like once again to express our gratitudefor the kindness and generosity shown to us bysending regular free copies of 30Days. Your mag-azine, so rich in information, has long been a con-stant source of information for us on the Churchand the outside world, and for this wonderful giftwe are truly grateful to you. We are now comingto the climax of the celebrations for the eight
r the world • Letters from all over the world • Letters from all over the world •
¬
Above the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Wood
in Imbersago (Lecco); right, the wooden statue venerated
in the sanctuary
8 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
hundred years of the founding of the Order ofSaint Clare and we are pleased to inform youthat, even as we write, the relics of our mother,Saint Clare, are here in the Philippines, broughtby the Ambassador of the Philippines to the HolySee, and are making the rounds of various com-munities of Poor Clares of the archipelago. In thisregard, we humbly ask you and your employeesfor some free copies of Who prays is saved. Wethought it would be a wonderful gift to the faithfulwho on 11 August 2012 will join us for the cele-
brations on the feast ofour Mother. We wouldlike to ask you for leastfive hundred copies, butif you can not, we will behappy with what youcan send us. Thank you
so much and may the Lord continue to bless youand all your intentions, while we will continue topray for the success of your mission.
With all respect, yours,
Sister María Lilia Javier, CCS, and Community
Laoag City, 25 April 2012
Dear Mr Senator,Peace and all good!We would like once again to express our gratitudefor your kindness and generosity towards us andfor the prompt response to our request for freecopies of Who prays is saved. Thanks so muchfor having so diligently fulfilled our wish. May theLord, unsurpassable in generosity, reward you foryour efforts. For our part we promise to remem-ber all your intentions in our prayers, especiallywhen we are kneeling before the Most BlessedSacrament.
May God bless us all.Respectfully yours,
for Sister María Lilia Javier, CCS, and CommunitySister Ana María de San José
Letters from all over the world • Letters from all ove
Left, Our Lady and Child
with the two girls
of the appearance
of Gallivaggio. The group
in wood from 1631,
is preserved in the niche
of the main altar of the shrine
of Gallivaggio (Sondrio),
photo below
93ODAYS - 5 - 2012
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGOPARISH OF NOTRE-DAME DE L’ASSOMPTION
Qui prie sauve son âmefor children and families
Boma, 19 March 2012
Mr Director,Thank you because I received the rosaries: they arereally needed for children. But we still need someQui prie sauve son âme booklets, in great demandby the children and Christian families in our parishand diocese.
Thanks for all you have done so far. May Godbless you!
Roger Phanzu-Kumbu
GUINEA-BISSAUCATHOLIC MISSION OF CANCHUNGO
Quem reza se salvato distribute to the youth
Canchungo, 27 March 2012
Dear 30Giorni,I have only now receivedsome back issues because ofmy change of address.
For the same reason, Ihave not even received theCD of Gregorian chants. Andto think that I still keep theLiber usualis bought in the’fifties when I was in the minorseminary!
Also, I will make a proposal:to send me the Portuguese edi-tion of 30Dias, so that it canalso serve my brothers. Herein Guinea-Bissau Portuguese isthe official language in fact,even if they speak kriol. Iwould recommend this for allthe copies sent to Guinea-Bis-
sau, although, of course,this proposal is not my re-sponsibility.
I would also like somecopies of Quem reza sesalva sent to me, also inPortuguese, which I willdistribute to those whomay be inclined to voca-tion or some good youngpeople. For this I send youone hundred euros.
Please excuse the in-convenience.
Father Rino Furlato, OFM
r the world • Letters from all over the world • Letters from all over the world •
Above and below, two images
of the Sanctuary of Our Lady
of Tears in Lezzeno (Como)
10 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
PANAMAST PETER THE APOSTLE PARISH
The faithful continue to ask for Quien reza se salva
Santa Fe, 23 April 2012
Dear Brothers,My name is Arcelio Castroand I have been workingfor nine months in theparish of St Peter theApostle in Santa Fe, in thenorth of the Veraguas re-gion, in Panama.
I would first of all like tothank sincerely all thosewho worked on the prepa-ration of the bookletQuien reza se salva, inparticular the director andeditor Giulio Andreotti andRoberto Rotondo. I re-ceived, some months ago,five hundred copies
through the Monastery de la Visitación inPanama City: they have already been dis-tributed, one for each family, and werevery well received, even by those who hadmoved away from religious practice.Many have asked to borrow them to beable to read them at home, calmly.
The faithful continue to ask for thebooklet. I write for this reason, that is tomake the request of another five hundredcopies. If you can, you can send them tothe same address, namely the Monasteryde la Visitacion of Panama. If you need acontribution, I ask you to inform us. Forour part we continue to ask those whohave benefited from the booklets forprayers for donors, and I myself offersome masses.
God bless you abundantly for the sup-port of our parish.
Fraternally,
Father Arcelio Castro
Letters from all over the world • Letters from all ove
Below, view of the Sanctuary of Tirano (Sondrio).
Next to the Romanesque-Lombard style bell tower,
the majestic dome built in 1580;
right, the statue of Our Lady of Tirano
113ODAYS - 5 - 2012
MEXICOPERPETUAL ADORATION SISTERS OF THE BLESSED
SACRAMENT OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST CONVENT
We receive with immense gratitudeQuien reza se salvaand the other publications
Coscomatepec, Veracruz, 25 April 2012
Dear Senator Giulio Andreotti,Praised be the Most Blessed Sacrament!Please receive a fraternal greeting in the Risen Je-sus: we hope from the heart that He bless you abun-dantly and reward your generosity to our monasticcommunity.
We are the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of theMost Blessed Sacrament of the Convent of SaintJohn the Baptist in Coscomatepec. Our mission isto witness the presence of our Lord Jesus in the Eu-
charist, prostrate at His feet day and night, offeringour continued prayer and worship for all ofmankind. Because of this, we turn to you with greatgratitude, receiving from your great generosity themagazine 30Días, the booklet Quien reza se sal-va, “El Hijo no puede hacer nada por su cuenta”and the Los cantos de la Tradición. Not being in acondition to pay the good you do us, we ask God inour prayers and we place in the hands of Our Ladyof Guadalupe your needs and those of all the peo-ple who cooperate in the publication of this en-
r the world • Letters from all over the world • Letters from all over the world •
Above, the interior of the Holy House;
on the right, the Basilica of the Holy House in Loreto (Ancona)
¬
12 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
riching material that informs us and forms us forour spiritual life. The last time we received the mag-azine was in December last year, the most recentnumbers have not yet arrived; we hope to continueto receive the magazine monthly and other publica-tions you direct.
Certain that Jesus Eucharist will be your reward,and that of your loved ones and associates, we greetyou.
Most affectionately in Christ,
Mother Esperanza del Corazónde Jesús and Community
COLOMBIAAPOSTOLIC VICARIATE
OF SAN VICENTE – PUERTO LEGUÍZAMO
I would like to give Quien reza se salvato the catechists
San Vicente, 1 May 2012
Dear Senator Giulio Andreotti,I am a diocesan priest of the Apostolic Vicariate ofSan Vicente – Puerto Leguízamo, a vast region(ninety-six thousand square kilometers) of theColombian Amazon; my job for over ten years, isas vicar of pastoral care and person responsible forthe areas of Catechesis, Biblical Promotion and thePontifical Missionary Works. We are few and havemore than one job. I turn to you to ask you kindly tosend us a good number of copies of the bookQuien reza se salva because I would like to give thecatechists and promoters of the word a good toollike this for them to continue in their ministry ofcatechesis.
Letters from all over the world • Letters from all ove
Left, the icon of Our Lady of Health venerated
in the Roman Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian,
in the photo on the right
133ODAYS - 5 - 2012
This is a local church with many needs andmany challenges, since clashes between soldiers ofthe national army, guerrillas of the FARC (Revolu-tionary Armed Forces of Colombia), drug traffick-ers and paramilitary groups often occur, which cre-ate continuous apprehension in our populationand communities. The choice to operate for thepoor and our missionary vocation ask us to be withour people always and to be a prophetic voice todenounce abuses and irregularities that from everyside violate human rights and international human-itarian law. We are a credible Church and well ac-cepted by our members. The challenges are many,but faith and hope in the Risen Lord comfort us andencourage us to continue in the mission entrustedto us. Thank you so much for the attention that youmay give to this.
Father Ricardo Tovar Sánchez
LEBANONORDER OF THE CARMELITE FATHERS
Qui prie sauve son âme,simple and practical tool for prayer
Hazmieh, 11 May 2012
Dear Director,May the peace of the Lord be always with you!Thank you for the magazine 30Jours that alwaysarrives to me. I read a lot about the booklet Qui priesauve son âme which has done so much good to allthe people who have benefited from it. Therefore,with this, I ask, if possible, to send us a hundredcopies, since many of our young people (prayergroups) would like to use this tool as a simple andpractical way to prayer.
May the good Lord continue to keep you in goodhealth and to bless your mission in the Church.
Father Makhoul Farha, OCD,Provincial Superior of the Carmelites in Lebanon
r the world • Letters from all over the world • Letters from all over the world •
Above, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love in Rome;
right the icon venerated in the sanctuary
14 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
BENINCONVENT OF ETOILE NOTRE-DAME
Qui prie sauve son âme helps to pray well
Parakou, 29 May 2012
Mr Director,I am writing to thank you for sending 30Jours, avery well documented magazine and with very finegraphics. But that is not all. Some years ago weasked for some copies of the booklet Qui priesauve son âme. All copies were distributed in a veryshort time for the spiritual good of those who bene-fited from them. Now many are asking for thesebooklets that help them to pray well. This would al-so avoid them finding refuge in sects, very numer-ous in Benin.
If you could then renew your generous gesture,we would be deeply grateful to you. Thanks in ad-vance from all persons who, thanks to you, comenear to God.
Respectfully,
Mother Bibiane Igbaro
Letters from all over the world •
The statue of Our Lady in the Lourdes grotto,
in France; below, the facade of the Basilica
On 19 February last thetask of presenting toBenedict XVI the ad-
dress of homage in the name ofthe new cardinals created in theConsistory the day before fell tohim. On that occasion, His Emi-nence Cardinal Filoni placed theservice of the new cardinals “un-der the protect ion of Mary,Mother of Grace”. Now, his‘strategy’ for living the forthcom-ing Year of Faith is a s implerosary. A rosary of prayers to beoffered for the proclamation ofthe Gospel on every continent.The easiest way to “ask the Lordfor the gift of faith,” for oneselfand for others. This is a Cam-paign of world prayer for theevangelization which must ac-company the Year of Faith, towhich Pope Benedict XVI gavehis own blessing on 11 May, dur-ing an audience granted to theNational Directors of the Pontifi-cal Missionary Works, who will bethe leaders of the initiative intheir own countries.
Fernando Filoni, Prefect ofthe Congregation for the Evan-gelization of Peoples, has trav-eled the world and knows how itworks. His confidential nature,the distaste for gossip, the greatcapacity for work, the prompt-ness in going to the heart of theproblems, looking for solutionswith a sense of reality are known.And the fact that these qualitiesdo not draw up the outline of a
Vatican ‘bureaucrat’, but ratherreveal a spiritual wisdom and in-s ight into the things of theChurch and the world that is sim-ple and concrete. As rosarybeads.
30Days met him in his studioin the historic Palazzo di Propa-ganda Fide, Rome, overlookingthe Spanish Steps. The Congre-gation for the Evangelization ofPeoples today comprises over a
Year of Faith
“The Year of the faith is first and foremost a year when we must prayfor faith, and ask the Lord for the gift of it”. A wide-ranging interviewwith Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregationfor the Evangelization of Peoples. From the ordinations of the Chinese bishops to a ‘campaign’ of prayersfor the proclamation of the Gospel in every continent
A rosary for the whole world
by Gianni Valente
16 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
Fernando Filoni receives the cardinal's hat from Pope Benedict XVI
in the Consistory of 18 February 2012
thousand ecclesiastical districts,including the vast majority of dio-ceses in Africa, Asia and Ocea-nia, as well as universities, semi-naries, hospitals, schools.
When you became cardi-nal, in your biographicalnote published in L’Osserva-tore Romano it was writtenthat as a child “your housewas just opposite the churchof your town”. Evidently, thiswas an important detail inyour life...
FERNANDO FILONI: God of-fers many opportunities, andbuilds our story on the basis ofwhat we are. I frequented theparish church, served Mass forthe priests and being with them atthe altar I was aware of theirsense of dedication. Until oneevening the parish priest askedall us altar boys, but will none ofyou this year enter the seminary?I raised my hand and said: I !There was something of child-hood spontaneity in that impulse.But also the fact of having grownup having the faith of my motherand father, in the things of everyday, before my eyes, had some-thing to do with it.
The years of your prepara-tion for the priesthood werethose of Vatican Council II.
Our superior had us read thenews of the Counci l during
meals. The TV, even though inblack and white, gave us visuallythe image of the universality andthe varied human diversity of theChurch: the pope, bishops andpatriarchs of the East who en-tered St Peter’s in procession.Whites, blacks, bearded, West-erners, Easterners... When Istarted theology at the seminaryof Viterbo, the Council was over.The high-backed chairs thatserved for the general congrega-tions of the Council Fathers weresent to various seminaries. Thetheology lecture hall was set upwith those that arrived in Viterbo.So we attended the lectures sit-ting on the chairs of the Councilfathers. And we tried to imaginewho had been sitting on thoseseats now occupied by us.
Your episcopal motto is“Lumen Gentium Christus”.It recalls the first words ofthe dogmatic constitution onthe Church, the most impor-tant document released bythe Council.
We were impressed by thegreat debate on the Church thathad formed the core of theCounci l : “Lumen GentiumChristus” , a l l in only threewords. The beginning of theconciliar Constitution recalledthe mystery and mission of theChurch. If the Church does notreflect the light of Christ, it hasno reason to exist. We too wereasked to proclaim and bear wit-ness to Christ. This is the mis-sion that the Church has also en-trusted to me. As a priest, and
3ODAYS - 5 - 2012 17
¬
Above, Benedict XVI
with Cardinal Filoni
on the occasion of the
audience with the national
directors of the Pontifical
Missionary Works
in the Clementine Hall,
on 11 May 2012;
right, Cardinal Filoni
on the occasion of taking
possession of the cardinal
deaconship of Our Lady
of Coromoto in St John
of God, Rome,
23 February 2012
then as a bishop, and also asnuncio.
After your priestly ordina-tion, you came to Rome tocontinue your studies. Youlived and carried out yourpastoral ministry in a parish,and taught in a Roman highschool. How do you remem-ber that time?
My bishop had allowed me togo to Rome to complete my stud-ies. I chose to stay in a parish,and not in a college. They werevery beautiful years. The parishwas that of St Titus, which hasnow been ent i t led to SanLeonardo Murialdo. I taught reli-gion at the Vivona high school,at the separate branch that thenbecame the Socrates highschool. I met hundreds of boysand girls. It was the ’seventies,the time of contestation. For me,who was studying theology, thecontinuous dialogue with themwas a help to compare what wewere studying with real life. Alsofor the youngsters, I think, it was
an interesting experi-ence to hear about theol-ogy and church historyoutside of the trivializa-tions that were in manynewspapers.
How did you enterthe Holy See’s diplo-matic service?
Year of Faith
On the left, the Council fathers outside St Peter’s Basilica during the work of Vatican II. The episcopal motto of Filoni, "Lumen Gentium
Christus," recalls the title of the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church; right, Benedict XVI signing the encyclical Caritas inVeritate on 29 June 2009: Archbishop Filoni, then the Deputy Secretary of State, is at his side,
F ernando Filoni was born on15 April 1946 in Manduria, in
the province of Taranto, to a fami-ly, originally from Galatone (Lec-ce), where the father served inthe IRS. He completed his mid-dle school in Nardò, his highschool studies in Molfetta, at thePius XI Puglia regional seminaryand those of theology in Viterbo,at the seminary in Santa Mariadella Quercia. He was ordained apriest by Antonio Rosario Men-nonna, Bishop of Nardò, on 3 Ju-ly 1970. He moved to Rome andattended the Pontifical LateranUniversity, earning a degree inCanon Law, and the State Uni-versity La Sapienza, where hegraduated in philosophy. At thePro Deo (now part of the Free In-ternational University of SocialStudies) he obtained a degree inthe Sciences and methods ofpublic opinion, specializing injournalism. After completing hisstudies, the Cardinal Vicar ofRome, Ugo Poletti, proposedthat he enter the Pontifical Eccle-siastical Academy.
In 1981 he began his diplo-matic mission serving the HolySee in Sri Lanka. Then he wasassigned to Iran from 1983 to1985. After some years of serv-
ice in the Secretariat of State, in1989 he was transferred toBrazil, where he remained until1992, when he began to reside inHong Kong. In the then Britishcolony the Holy See had openeda ʻStudy Missionʼ – formallylinked to the Nunciature in thePhilippines – to follow from closeby the situation of the Church inChina. His stay in Hong Konglasted until January 2001, whenJohn Paul II appointed him titulararchbishop of Volturno and pon-tifical nuncio in Jordan and Iraq.He remained in Baghdad duringthe last two years of the regime ofSaddam Hussein, and then dur-ing the war and for the next threeyears, until, in March 2006, PopeBenedict XVI transferred him asnuncio to the Philippines. In June2007 he was appointed DeputySecretary of State, an office heheld until 10 May 2011, the day ofhis appointment as Prefect of theCongregation for theEvangelization of Peo-ples. Benedict XVI cre-ated him a cardinal inthe Ordinary PublicConsistory of 18 Feb-ruary 2012.
G.V.
The prefect of the ‘young’ Churches
When my bishop asked me toreturn to the diocese – I had beenmissing for eight years – Cardi-nal Ugo Poletti, Vicar, with hisaffable and engaging manner,said: “Your diocese already hasplenty of priests! The Secretaryof State asks me if any are avail-able…”. It may seem like an acci-dent along the way. But for me itpassed also through there, themain thread that traces the life ofGod within us.
After a period in Sri Lan-ka, you were sent to Iran.How was that country inthose years?
It was the hardest period ofthe war between Iran and Iraq.The bombings came even as faras Tehran. It was a very violentwar, with hundreds of thousandsof deaths. The Holy See had anold mission there, since a repre-sentative of Pope Urban VIII es-tablished himself in Isfahan in1629 at the request of Shah Ab-bas the Great, the artificer of acultural and political Persian ren-aissance. A presence that alwaysremained one of fluctuating for-tunes, up to the point of the es-tablishing of full diplomatic rela-tions between Iran and the Holy
See in 1953. There I was able toshare the life of the local Chris-tian community, composed ofCatholic and Orthodox Armeni-ans, Lat in and ChaldeanCatholics. For them life was notalways easy. But we were very re-spected. There was the case ofemployees taken hostage in theU.S. embassy. But that event alsocreated esteem for the nuncia-ture, which faced the difficult is-sue from a humanitarian point of
view, without intervening in thepolitical sphere. And this was ap-preciated.
After further diplomaticstages (Secretariat of State,Brazil), you were sent toHong Kong, a privi legedpoint of observation onmainland China. Then it wasstill widely thought that alarge part of Chinesecatholicity, under pressurefrom the civil authorities,was being lead toward creat-ing an independent nationalchurch. What was your expe-rience in this regard?
When I was a seminarian, Iwas impressed by the witnessesof fidelity to the Gospel that camefrom China. I had read the mem-
oirs of Gaetano Pollio, the Arch-bishop of Kaifeng who had beenimprisoned and expelled in theearly years of the Maoist regime,later becoming Archbishop ofOtranto, and then of Salerno. Iadmired how, in sufferings, hehad served the Church and lovedthe Chinese people. Thoseevents came back to my mind, af-ter having been posted to HongKong. Those were the years ofthe opening desired by Deng Xi-aoping. Now we see very wellhow far-sighted Deng’s visionwas. The Holy See wanted thatits own international position notbe identified with Taiwan, wherethere is a Vatican embassy. So inHong Kong a ‘Study Mission’was opened which was to con-cern itself with the People’s Chi-na, apart from with the thenBritish colony and Macao. It wasthe time when the Church in Chi-na was also being reorganized.The Holy See wanted to under-stand how the s i tuat ion wasevolving. And to show theirc loseness to the ChineseCatholics who showed their greatdesire to live their faith in com-munion with the Bishop ofRome. A bond of communionwhich the Chinese bishops hadcontinued to confess even duringthe persecutions.
How did you regard the di-visions existing in the Chi-nese Church between the so-called ‘official’ and ‘under-ground’?
The division was not the resultof church dynamics, but of histor-ical and political circumstances. Itwas a situation of suffering andtrial. And you had to help theChurch in China, both the so-called ‘underground’ area andthe incorrectly named ‘patriotic’one, to look at the situation froma future perspective. To makemyself understood, at that time, Isaid that the situation of ChineseCatholicism was comparable to aspring whose water, at a cer-
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The city of Fallujah, Iraq, hit by heavy bombing in November 2004
tain point in its flow, became im-peded, it was divided and foundtwo paths in its flow. One partsought a way of continuing toflow outside. The other found away of flowing beneath the sur-face of the earth. The two cur-rents, arising from the samesource, however, were destinedto find themselves again in theunity of the sea. And the sea – Isaid then – is the heart of God.The two church communities, ifthey remained in the faith of theapostles, would then one day befound together united in Christ.Of course, since the two currentswere separated there have beenmany complications. But I be-lieve that sooner or later a solu-tion will be found.
Then, as nuncio, you livedthe crucial experience inIraq. Where you also experi-enced the bombs.
I was there in the final periodof Saddam Hussein’s regime,during which the UN-imposedsanctions to collapse the regimeweighed in an incredible way.The voice of the Church wasprophetic. We repeated every-where only what we saw: that infact the sanctions hit the people,and not the regime.
How do you now re-readthe military interventions inIraq and what followed them,for that area of the world and
especially for its Christiancommunities?
The war in itself was wrong.You can not think of bringingdemocracy with war. At that timethere were conditions for negoti-ations. Saddam had indicated tome also that this was his request.But like any leader, especially inthe Arab world, if you wanted todeal with him you had to avoidhumiliating him. The understand-ing of the situation was lacking.Christians suffered injustices un-der the regime, as did the wholesociety. But the regime, to main-tain internal peace, at least pro-tected freedom of worship. Thewar was not justified in terms ofpolitical and international justice.Because Iraq had not intervened
in the 11 September attacks.And the issue of weapons of massdestruction was a pretext. Amonth before the bombing be-gan, Saddam obtained from theassembly of tribal chiefs the ap-proval of the law by which Iraqundertook not to developweapons of mass destruction. Weall said it was important that thishappened, that it was a sign of hiswillingness to cooperate. But itwas to no avail. Evidently, thewar had already been decided.And already then you knew thatchaos would come afterwards,and the war destabilized not onlythe small Christian community,but every aspect of life in thecountry, resulting in tens of thou-sands of deaths. This is what westill have before our eyes.
After a brief period in thePhilippines, you were called toRome as Deputy Secretary ofState. How were the rhythmsand methods of working?
The deputy is one of the prin-cipal collaborators of the Pope.
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Left, baptisms in a parish of Dili,
East Timor; below Benedict XVI
with Cardinal Filoni at the audience
for the national directors
of the Pontifical Missionary Works
in the Clementine Hall, 11 May 2012
He answers directly to him andto the Secretary of State. For meit was a very nice period, espe-cially because it gave me the op-portunity to get to know Bene-dict XVI more closely and tohave very frequent contact withhim, who is a father, a teacher,and is extremely lovable. Andthose are the riches and the giftsof grace that those who receivedthem carry with them always.And for which you can onlythank God. The rhythms andmethods, although challenging,were part of the office.
You are now Prefect of theCongregation for the Evan-gelization of Peoples. Whatare the criteria that orientyou in the task that was as-signed you?
The Congregation de Propa-ganda Fide is ful l of history.Those who work here must feelthe great legacy of this depart-ment that has been and continuesto be so important in helping thelife of the Church around theworld. Its first reason for being isto proclaim the Gospel every-where. And given that theChurch is now rooted also inmany of those that were once themission territories, PropagandaFide continues to offer its servicesto the bishops, priests, religiousand lai ty of those part icularChurches. It thus contributes to
expressing the “Pope’s solicitudefor all the Churches”: an evoca-tive formula, which always strikesme. Over t ime, the youngerChurches also gain their ownconsistency in terms of seminar-ies, residences, schools, universi-ties, health care in the towns andvillages. The proclamation of theGospel is also expressed in meet-ing the needs of populations. Isee an ancient wisdom in thechoice of having entrusted toPropaganda Fide the service andcare in favor of new churches,not only with regard to what wasstrictly ecclesial, but also in sup-porting material works thanks tothe Pontifical Missionary Works,the network born from the intu-ition of Pauline Jaricot, the ven-erable who died in poverty on thestreets of Lyon just one hundredand fifty years ago.
Is the propagation of thefaith comparable to a strate-gy of cultural and religiousexpansion?
The dynamics of evangeliza-tion itself come from Christ him-self. He, the envoy of the Father,sent his disciples to proclaim theGospel, first in pairs, and thenagain giving them this mandatefully and definitively before theAscension. Expansion strategiesrespond to a commercial or po-litical logic. The inner dynamismof faith, in truth, is not compara-
ble to all of this. You can see it inaction in the Gospels: when thefirst disciples met Jesus theyasked to stay with him, to knowhim, to hear him: “Master, wheredo you live?”. “Come and see.”And they stayed with him. Therewas no strategy, no idea of ex-pansion, there was the desire toknow him, because no onespoke of God as he. Evangelizingis tiring. St Paul knew it well andour missionaries know it well.Evangelization pays a high trib-ute every year also in blood, butour missionaries, like the Apos-tle of the Gentiles, have the con-solation of God, like St Paul,who, after many persecutions,had a dream in which the Lordsaid to him: “Take courage. Forjust as you have borne witness tomy cause in Jerusalem, so youmust also bear witness in Rome”(Acts 23, 11).
As Prefect of PropagandaFide, you find yourself onceagain dealing with the affairsof the Church in China. Thegovernment agencies contin-ue to want to exercise formsof control over the appoint-ment of Bishops. How canyou deal with this problem?
You have to leave behind theerroneous idea that the bishop isan official. If you can not escapefrom this logic, everything re-mains conditioned by a politicalvision. To become a party or gov-ernment official there are deter-mined criteria. Those used forthe appointment of a bishop aredifferent. And this characteristicshould be respected. What weare asking everywhere, not onlyin China, is that the bishops begood bishops, worthy of the taskthat is entrusted to them. Andthat is that they be men of God
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Faithful in prayer in the precincts
of the shrine of She Shan,
near Shanghai, on the occasion
of the annual pilgrimage of 24 May
who are also capable of anoverview on the life of their par-ticular church, to confirm thebrethren and ordain priests in thefaith and the grace of God. A par-ticular, spiritual suitability, and apsychological maturity, which al-so involves balance and prudence,are needed. In the selection ofbishops that also occurs in Chinathese are the criteria that are dearto the Holy See. Knowing well ofcourse that the bishops are citi-zens of their own country, and, as
such, must be loyal to theirhomeland, giving to Caesar whatis Caesar’s, but not at the ex-pense of giving to God what isGod’s. As successors of the apos-tles, it is required of them to befai thful in al l things to theChurch’s doctrine. This is not an‘order’ of the Pope. The faithfulwant it first of all. It is the faithfulwho actually then judge the suit-ability and dignity of their ownbishops: they love them or mar-ginalize them. The precious goodthat is dear to the Pope and thepastors in China, and that isasked of us by the Lord, is thepastoral care of the people ofGod, who in China have an ex-traordinary sensus fidei, purifiedby years of suffering.
What is the role of theHoly See in relation to theChurch in China?
The Church is a real i ty ofcommunion. It is not a top-downstructure, where the only prob-lem is to pass on the orders thatarrive from above. The Magis-terium doesn’t have the duty toaffirm certain ideas or beliefs ofthe Pope or the bishops. Its prop-er funct ion is the salus ani-marum, it is to confirm the peo-ple of God in faith and fidelity to
Christ, it is to live in communionwith the whole Church, in fidelityto the Pope. In China, as else-where, where difficulties occur,we must intervene, and perhapscorrect, if necessary. But also inthis process no one decides byhimself. There is the concur-rence of the faithful, the consentof priests and bishops. TheChurch lives in this world andwalks in history. It is essential al-so that on relations with the civiland political realities, bishops,priests, religious and faithful helpthe Apostolic See by providingelements for evaluation. The on-ly thing that can not be done is toseparate and oppose the Succes-sor of Peter to the bishops, orpriests to bishops, and maintain
the unity of the people God.Here the speech of Lumen Gen-tium returns: if the Church is thePeople of God and the Body ofChrist, the elements that belongas much to its tradition as to itsliving reality can not be placed incontrast.
Benedict XVI has pro-claimed a Year of Faith. Howwill you and your depart-ment be stimulated by theprospect suggested by thePope to the whole Church?
We, as a Congregation, lookto the Year of Faith from the per-spective of the first announce-ment. And we believe that theYear of Faith is first and fore-most a year when we must prayfor faith, that is, ask the Lord forthe gift of it. Without this, all ourworks and aid networks that em-brace the entire world, especial-ly the missionary, would alsolose their raison d’etre. Becauseof this we thought of a small con-crete sign: we will dispense asimple rosary whose intermedi-ate beads between one series often beads and the other will be ofdifferent colors to represent thefive continents, to thereby signi-fy that that series of ten beads isparticularly dedicated to theneeds of evangelization and offaith in that continent (the colorsare: white for Europe, red forAmerica, yellow for Asia, bluefor Oceania and green forAfrica). We will distribute it allover the world, gathering re-quests and adherence a lsothrough the internet. So whoev-er wants to, can pray to theMother of Jesus for the procla-mation of the Gospel in everycontinent. I like to think of theinvitation, at Cana in Galilee,that Mary addressed to the ser-vants: “Do whatever he tel lsyou”. If we listen to this call, weare confident that the Lord willnot fail to bestow on His Churchthe best wine of faith throughoutthe world. q
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The recitation of the rosary in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Beijing
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“We will not be able tooffer appropriateresponses without
a new acceptance of the gift ofGrace, we will not know how towin men over to the Gospel ex-cept by returning ourselves firstof all to a deep experience ofGod”. Thus, Benedict XVI spoketo the Italian bishops’ meeting inplenary session, on 24 May last.As the Year of Faith approaches,
the Successor of Peter never failsto suggest the only thing that hereally seems to have at heart.These are confused times, to beregarded, however, with “a grate-ful look because of the growth ofgood grain even in a land which isoften arid”. Times when even thecurrent eccles iast ical real i tyseems to make more evident andluminous the words of Jesus:“Without me you can do noth-
ing” (Jn 15, 5). “I am with you al-ways, even until the end of theworld” (Mt 28, 20).
In this framework MonsignorFrancesco Moraglia lived the ear-ly stages of his ministry as thenew Patriarch of Venice. His an-
by Gianni Valente
"To speak of the Church only in terms of planning leadsineluctably to think that, in the end, it is men who are at the origin of the act of faith. And this is the transposition, in pastoral terms, of the thought of Pelagius".Interview with Francesco Moraglia, Patriarch of Venice
The new Patriarch of Venice
Francesco Moraglia during
the inauguration ceremony,
25 March 2012
Year of Faith
Let’s return to St Augustine
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swers, in the interview that fol-lows, are a simple aid to live theforthcoming Year of Faith as apropitious time. Clearing thefield of any risk of ecclesial ‘self-occupying’.
Benedict XVI during hisjourney to Portugal, said:“Often we are anxiously pre-occupied with the social, cul-tural and political conse-quences of the faith, takingfor granted that this faith ispresent, which unfortunate-ly is less and less realistic”.Then he called for a Year ofFaith. What did the Popewant to suggest by this?
FRANCESCO MORAGLIA:Summoning the Year of Faith,the Holy Father has always want-ed to indicate what is always –therefore even today – the foun-dational reality of the life of thebeliever and the Church, that isthe faith.
It is precisely the conceptionwe have of faith that will deter-mine the consequent way of un-derstanding Christianity; andfaith, being the beginning of theChristian life, then, what theevangelist Mark says about theparable of the sower is valid forfaith: if you do not understandthis, how can you understand allthe other parables? In short: de-pending on the idea that we haveof faith, one kind of Christianityor another or ig inates andspreads.
The newspapers are say-ing: this Year is to ‘revitalize’the faith. But is this in ourpower? Are we – the Church,the Pope, or the faithful – theartificers of our faith?
The Church, the Pope, thefaithful, as well as theologians,are not at the origin of the act offaith and of the life of the believer.
For this we must pay attentionto the way we speak. In the hu-man and ecclesial ambience lan-guage is of prime importance;
now, speaking of the Church on-ly or primarily in terms of pro-gramming, as well as reducingevangelisation to a matter of lan-guage, leads ineluctably to thinkthat, in the end, it is men who areat the origin of the act of faith.Thus everything is reduced to a
human operation. But this – con-sidering it carefully – is the trans-position, in pastoral terms, of thethought of Pelagius; in my view,today more than ever, the nameof Augustine must resound, towhose school all of us, pastorsand faithful, must return. ¬
Francesco Moraglia, secondson of four children (two girls
and two boys), was born inGenoa, on 25 May 1953 to alawyer father – who died lastFebruary – and a motherteacher and then housewife. Hewas ordained a priest on 29June 1977.
In 1979 he was appointedassistant pastor in a parish inthe center of Genoa, a positionhe held until 1988. In 1981 hereceived his doctorate in dog-matic theology and in 1986 be-gan teaching at the LigurianHigher Institute of Religious Sci-ences, teaching fundamentalDogmatic Theology and Sacra-mental Theology. From 1994 to2007 he was also dean of the In-stitute. From the late ʼeightieshe also taught Christology, An-thropology, Sacramental Theol-ogy and the History of Theologyat the Theological Faculty ofNorthern Italy, a branch of theSeminary of Genoa.
From 1990 until 2007 he wasdiocesan assistant to MEIC
(Church Movement for CulturalInvolvement). From 1995 hewas appointed chairman of theDiocesan Commission for thepastoral problems of alternativereligious movements and ofsects, and also – since 1996 –Director of the Diocesan Officefor Culture and the University.
On 6 December 2007 he wasappointed bishop of the Episco-pal See of La Spezia – Sarzana– Brugnato. Cardinal AngeloBagnasco ordained him bishopon 3 February 2008.
In April 2010 he was appoint-ed Chairman of the Board of Di-rectors of the Culture and Com-munication Foundation of theIEC, on which TV2000 depends.
Benedict XVI appointed himPatriarch of Venice on 31 Janu-ary 2012. On 29 May 2012 hewas elected president of theBishopsʼ Conference ofTriveneto.
In conjunction with the en-trance and the first months ofpastoral ministry in Venice, twoinstant-books published byCid/Gente Veneta were alreadydedicated to the new Patriarch:Francesco, Patriarca dei duemari [Francesco, Patriarch ofthe two seas] (with a preface byDino Boffo) and Con voi e pervoi [With you and for you] (with aforeword by Don Sandro Vi-gani). Some photos on thesepages have been taken fromthem.
G.V.
A patriarch for the people
To return to your question:the Church, the Pope and thefaithful can – properly speaking –revitalize the faith, first of all, byplacing it with renewed strengthat the center of Church life andproposing it as a way of life, bet-ter, as the serious case of theChristian.
How does faith begin?Can it be the result of an ed-ucational plan that makesthe religious sense of manemerge?
I limit myself to saying thatfaith, since it is the conclusion ofgrace, is a pure gift! I would notlike, in fact, especially given theactual context, that by softeningthe force of that affirmation toend up – as I said – by describingfaith in too human terms. Cer-tainly, the expression: faith ispure grace, should be understoodin the sense that faith is alwaysoffered to us in a human way or,that is, by consulting with ourfreedom and never precluding it,as with our responsibility.
How do you keep, nurtureand increase faith? How doyou not lose it? Is it a ques-tion of tenacity?
Faith is maintained simply byliving it every day in the company
of the Church; day after day,therefore, there it is nurtured andgrows belonging to the world offaith and renewing every day thechoice of faith; in other words,letting oneself be carried by thefaith and remembering that – inthe concreteness of life – in theend, everything is a gift for theChristian. Certainly, to discoveroneselves creatures and to re-joice in being so, to perceive our-selves in our own persons and inour own history as part of awhole, of a project that alwaysprecedes and accompanies us,this is, we can say, grace at work.I find particularly effective the ex-pression used by Benedict XVI inPorta fidei: “Faith grows when itis lived as an experience of lovereceived and when it is communi-cated as an experience of graceand joy ...”.
When we speak of faith,the appeals to the Spirit, toGrace, to Jesus, sometimesappear as ritual forms, prem-ises obligated by ecclesial‘jargon’, before moving on tothe ‘true discourse’ wherethe emphasis is placed onstrategy, on the formula toadopt, on the educationalplan entrusted to us.
Sometimes it also happensthat these references are almostentirely absent from the languageof one who professes himself aChristian! So the fundamentalsof baptismal life are missing. Thisis an even more serious matter ifwe think that language is thehighest form of expression of aperson’s culture; in some catech-esis, for example, the confessionof Jesus the Savior was trans-formed into Jesus understood asa master, then friend, then as aspiritual force.
But if faith, which in a per-son’s and the Church’s life is es-sentially a gift and fulfillment, isdegraded to this dimension, andeverything tends to be pastoralplanning and human construc-tion, harnessing the Spirit in or-ganizat ional decis ions, theneven salvation becomes a fact ofpure theological design and pas-toral organization. Examplescan be multiplied, here I will limitmyself to indicating one in a cel-ebrative liturgical field: the cre-ative hyperactivity and a certainprotagonism in front of the as-sembly.
In many speeches, faith isidentified e contrario, as ifits affirmation was primarilya response to trends and cul-tural currents of the moder-nity in which we live. Whatdo you think of this type ofapproach? Faith has as itsfirst expressive attitude thecultural rebuttal of non-faith?
Yes, it is true, the risk indicat-ed actually exists.
Faith, above all, must be trueto itself, that is it must say JesusChrist, say it well, say it to every-body, say it in an understandableway and begin with – as we learnfrom Verbum Dei – the Word ofGod transmitted by the Church.
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Jesus and the Samaritan woman,
detail of the mosaics from Saint Mark’s
Basilica in Venice
The crit ic ism that was ad-dressed to some manuals coin-cided precisely with allowing it-self to get caught up by certain‘issues’ that it wanted to refute,ending up, however, by reducingor even distorting, in an unac-ceptable manner, the truth offaith which, in itself, it wanted toannounce.
Specifically, to take ad-vantage of the occasion ofthe Year of Faith, whatshould be done? Take initia-tives? Make speeches?
Faith is the response to a per-son – the person of Jesus Christ –so the speeches, conferences,
seminars alone are again insuffi-cient before the human-divine re-ality of faith; they would be suffi-cient were the faith to locate it-self, exclusively, on the humanlevel, if it were a pure ethicalchoice or a philosophical disser-tation. Faith, however, asks to becultivated and experienced in itssacramental reality, namely, itshuman and divine reality.
I am convinced, therefore, togive an example, that a more in-tense participation and a morecareful education in the liturgicalcelebration, on the part of thePeople of God – pastors and faith-ful – in view of a renewed life ofcharity towards God and one’sneighbor, would be a suitable pro-
posal, a correct starting point, inview of the Year of Faith.
This has to do with, I repeat,involving the whole ecclesialcommunity in the event of Easter– death/resurrection – of Christ;in this way we are immediatelyconducted to the center of thesalvific event which can only begathered in faith; the heart of theEucharistic act is characterized,precisely, as mysterium fidei.
If faith is a gift of grace, atthe beginning and at everystep of the way, what does thismean for the Church, for itscondition and its dynamics?
It involves many things. I will
indicate one which, however,seems to aid in understanding: Iallude to the use of the possessiveadjective ‘our’, placed before thenoun Church; this is a mode ofexpression that says, closeness,affection, sympathy toward theChurch but if you don’t have theawareness to keep it united to an-other expression: ‘His’ Church,the risk is to make us consider theBride of Christ as our creature,our product, a human achieve-ment that, in the end, preciselybecause it is ‘ours’ we can alwaysand newly reconstruct or decon-struct at will. Instead, the Church,above all, is His, that is Christ’sWho, according to the beautifulsymbolism of the early patristic
centuries, then recovered in theMiddle Ages, is the sun, while theChurch is placed as the mysteri-um lunae and is completely illu-minated by the sun.
Sometimes, even in ourrecent ecclesial events, thisperception of the wellspringof the Church seems to be-come obscure for manyChristians, with a type of re-versal: from reflection of thepresence of Christ, we passto perceiving the ecclesialcomplex as a reality commit-ted to attesting by itself itsown significant presence inhistory. And such attesta-tion of itself is presented asa way of ‘demonstrating’ thecredibility of Christianity.What can these dynamicslead to?
If you lose sight that the Chris-tian event is something real andhistorical, dealing with flesh andblood, then this fact leads us to a‘spiritualist’ vision that can nolonger intercept the real manmade, in fact, of flesh and blood.
In this way, if you lose sightthat the Church is the Body ofChrist, then, in every situation,the Church will be in search of itslegitimacy and affirmation, be-coming self-referential. Thinkabout the two disciples of Em-maus who, not aware of theRisen Lord, cont inue to ta lkabout their problems, their sor-rows and fail to open their eyeson Him and see Him.
It is the ever possible drama ofthe self-reference of the Church,that means: loss of its sacramen-tal identity; the Church, in fact,Vatican II again reminds us, inLumen Gentium, is a sacramentof Christ and, thus, the obfusca-tion of such reality is not trivial.
Similarly, sometimes itseems that the intention ofattest ing the faith in theworld is to be entrusted toextraordinary or even spec-tacular initiatives.
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Let’s return to St Augustine
But to set out along this roadis to be in conflict with what Jesussaid and did in the Bible, and withthe same realities of human life,made up of everyday gestures.The Church, in this way, wouldself-destruct; you can not live, infact, by extraordinary things, butby ordinary things: the things ofevery day; the Gospel is not for afew elect and not made up ofthings experienced only once.On the contrary, it is a matter ofsalvation every day and for everyman.
The beginning of the Yearof Faith coincides with thefiftieth anniversary of the be-ginning of Vatican Council II.Some attribute directly tothis event the crisis of faith,coming to interpret it as theorigin of the regression ofChristianity or even as a toolof penetrat ion of non-Catholic thought into theChurch. What do you thinkabout this?
My ordination took place in1977, so I can speak of havingbeen born theologically and as apriest after the great ecclesialevent of the Second Vatican Ecu-menical Council. If we reread thetexts of the Council, if we inter-pret its spirit by the letter and notagainst the letter, if we don’tlaunch ourselves in statementssuch as ‘out of loyalty to theCouncil it is necessary to go be-yond the Council’ (a phrase inwhich everyone can find whattime and again, they like best),then we cannot but consider theCouncil as a true grace for theChurch of our time. Also here,once again, Benedict XVI has in-dicated the main road to us talk-ing about the hermeneutics of re-form in continuity and distancinghimself from any hermeneuticsof rupture.
The Year of Faith has itsprecedent in that declared byPaul VI in 1967, which culmi-nated in the proclamation of
the Creed of the People ofGod. How did you personallyexperience that period, howdo you remember it?
Then I was a teenager, I wasfourteen; I remember well, how-ever, that there could be per-ceived in the media, and conse-quently in society, the growth ofa climate of suspicion and cer-tainly contrary to the magisteri-um of the Church. There clearlyappeared the attempt to dividethe ecclesial structure, contrast-ing the magisterium – especiallythat of the Pope – to that of thefaithful, considered the true Peo-ple of God. It was forgotten, orperhaps it wasn’t wanted that itbe remembered, that LumenGentium, speaking of the Peo-ple of God as the holder of theprophetic and charismatic pow-er, says, quoting Augustine: “Theuniversality of the faithful can noterr in believing ... ‘when from thebishops to the last of the lay faith-fu l ’ (c f . St August ine, Depraedestinatione Sanctorum14, 27: PL 44, 980) it shows uni-versal agreement in matters offaith and morals”. Those wereyears when, with opportune cat-echesis, more support and ac-companiment should have beengiven to the faith of the simple inthe face of the overwhelmingpower of specialists.
The Year of Faith coin-cides with an economic crisisthat is sweeping even the af-fluent society. Some will saythat refuge is being sought inthe spiritual to endure mate-rial problems. What does thefaith, for example, have todo with the loss of work thatis also in Italy causing an-guish to millions of people?
This corresponds to a wrongidea of faith, those who takerefuge in faith only so as not tosuccumb to material problems;the believer, in fact, is one whoadheres to the Lord Jesus apartfrom the fact that things, human-ly, go well or badly.
Faith, ‘especially’, is not aboutsomething that is collateral toman. The human being is not al-ready complete in himself, re-gardless of his relationship withJesus Christ. On the contrary,faith is what brings the human tocompletion respecting him in hisspecificity and autonomy.
That said, faith certainly pro-vides support in a particular way tothose who are experiencing hard-ships, helping them to live themand put them into a broader per-spective; with this, however, faithdoes not relieve the believer fromthe obligation of taking all thesteps that humanly must be takenand that are in his power to do.
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In an anecdote that circulatedin the theological context, someyears ago, it was said that a shipwas sinking, and then the captainordered: “The atheists to thepumps, the believers to pray!”.
You were born and raisedin Genoa and are now the Pa-triarch of Venice. Is thereany particular feature thatdistinguishes and unites thefaith of the people of thesea?
The love of their own historyand the connection to their ownroots, the keeping alive of thememories and traditions, the val-ue given to popular religion and,again, understanding the mean-ing of life as a journey, of goingtowards a goal. So, ultimately, agreat openness to the future andto others. On the other hand, thesea unites the shores of differentcountries and continents, the seamakes possible communicationbetween people through meet-ings and trade but particularlycultural exchanges; and finally,the sea, precisely in its own im-mensity, becomes a symbol ofGod and His infinity.
And what would you say,of your faith? How has itblossomed? What events andencounters nourished it?
My faith as assent to realitiesbelieved is, today, the same asthat of so many years ago when Iwas preparing for first commun-ion and when I was an altar boy; Iconsider this a wonderful thingbecause it says once again thetruth of the Gospel. I refer to Je-sus’ invitation: let the childrencome to me; the faith, thus, ap-pears – as it really is – for all: chil-dren and adul ts , s imple andlearned, rich and poor; here, in areal sense, all the ‘democratic na-ture’ of the faith appears.
The manner of adherence,then, does not touch the sub-stance of the act of faith that is,precisely, in grace, adherence tothe mystery and not cultural elab-oration. Precisely for this reason,the different and multiple ways ofadherence, more or less cultivat-ed, do not touch the faith itself,that is, the yes that saves.
And what indications willyou give to all to live the Yearof Faith?
The indication is to rediscoverthe faith in its own characteris-tics, overcoming every possiblereduction and distortion. The riskis to make it an intellectual orsentimental reality, no longergrasping it as a salvific event thatleads to the fulfillment of humani-
ty; man can not do it by himselfand faith allows him to fulfill hishumanity; faith completes whatmy being a creature onlyglimpses and predicts.
Therefore, the indication ofmethod that Jesus gave to hisown, when he called them to theapostolate, is fundamental .When asked: Master, where doyou live? Jesus responded byinviting them to follow him. We,too, at the beginning of this Yearof Faith, as the first thing, need torediscover the life of the Churchas a sequela Christi. This has todo not only with living in theChurch but, as Romano Guardinisaid almost a century ago, theChurch. And to do this it is cru-cial to recenter oneself in a moreauthentic prayer – especial lyliturgical prayer – and rediscoverthe humble gesture of pilgrim-age, a sign of a common walk to-wards the goal, which is the LordJesus, the beginning and comple-tion of our faith.
Pope Luciani, he also Pa-triarch, gave his first catech-eses as Pope on faith, hopeand charity. In what way canhis figure offer ideas for edi-fication in pastoral activity?
This year marks the centenaryof his birth, and we will attemptto celebrate it in a worthy man-ner. For some he was consideredrigid or even criticized for beingtoo faithful to the Pope and hismagisterium. In fact he tried untilthe end to compose matters andfind solutions to problems. And,more than thirty years after hisdeath, a very vivid memory of Lu-ciani remains in the people andparishes. The Venetians, both ofland and sea, retain a gratefuland affectionate remembranceof the passage of this patriarch.They remember him as a man ofGod, a pastor who has left amark among the people, alsowith the concreteness of hishomilies and his capability for di-alogue and listening. q
293ODAYS - 5 - 2012
The Risen
Jesus and
the Apostle
Thomas,
detail of the
mosaics from
Saint Mark’s
Basilica
in Venice
Let’s return to St Augustine
Mediplus opera nel settore sanitario medicale con:• Forniture Ospedaliere - Cliniche - Case di cura• Rivendita Dispositivi medici• Distribuzione Elettromedicali Neurologia NK*• Distribuzione Elettromedicali Cardiologia NK*• Rivendita Prodotti per comunità
Recently, a professor atthe University of Tunis,addressed his students
this way: “Be careful not to let
your pens fall, because other-wise the knives will remain inyour hands”. It is a wise warn-ing. The more precarious the
situation is, the more dialogue isnecessary, because there is noalternative. Certainly we Chris-tians – in the schools, universi-
Church Interreligious Dialogue
32 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
That's what counts also in the dialogue with Islam.Notes and reflections of the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue
Having seen the Pope praying
by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran
ties and hospitals thatwe maintain in the Mus-lim-majority countries –take care to witness thelove for all without dis-tinction or conditions,and our Muslim friendssincerely appreciate thisattitude. Day after day,working in this PontificalCouncil, I rediscover adimension sometimesset aside: our Muslimfriends respect peoplewho pray. A liturgy or aEucharist well preparedand well celebrated con-stitute a good Christianwitness. I will always re-member when I was inthe Secretariat of State,what an ambassador of
the Islam religion told me, whenhe came to make the traditionalfarewell visit: “After three yearsof mission to the Holy See,what most impressed me is notyour political position on theMiddle East or the prestige ofpontifical diplomacy, but to
have seen the Pope praying”. Ithink this is an invitation for usto always be people of faith, notto be afraid to express it. Obvi-ously there may be external ob-stacles (discrimination on reli-gious grounds) or also internal(ignorance, sin) that make ourwitness be not always bright.
It is important that whoeverenters into dialogue has a clearidea of the content of their faithand a well-defined spiritual pro-file: there can not be a dialoguebased on ambiguity. Unfortu-nately, many young Christianshave a superficial idea of thecontent of their faith; that iswhy it is a great blessing to havea Pope like Benedict XVI, whoknows how to witness andteach that our faith is not a feel-ing or emotion – maybe it is al-so, in some moments – and cer-tainly not a myth. Jesus Christexisted, was a man among men,he lived at a time and in a placehistorically determined by histo-ry, he died and rose again.Pope Benedict a lso te l ls us
about the balance between rea-son and faith. In a homily inGermany, he said: “Faith is sim-ple. We believe in God – the be-ginning and end of human life.In that God who enters into re-lationship with us human be-ings”. But he wondered: “Is itsomething reasonable?”, andspecified: “We believe that atthe beginning is the eternalWord, Reason and not Unrea-son” (Holy Mass in Regens-burg, 12 September 2006).
Alongside faith and reason,friendship is also important. In-terreligious dialogue is not a di-alogue between religions, butbetween believers called to tes-tify in the world today that mandoes not live by bread alone. Itall begins with respect to finishwith a respectful friendship.When we are faced with some-one who believes and prays dif-ferently from us, it is first of allnecessary to take the time tolook at him, to understand hisspiritual aspirations; then after-wards we will review what
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¬
On the facing page, left, Benedict XVI during the recitation of the rosary;
below, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran among the students of the Inter-Faith professional training center in Bokkos, Nigeria;
above, Iraqi faithful in a Chaldean church in Baghdad
distinguishes us and what in-stead unites us. And if there is acommon heritage, then it is upto all of us to offer it to the sur-rounding society, because reli-gious dialogue is not meant formy community, but for the oth-er, for that of my interlocutor.Dialogue is an opening thatcalls us to approach the reli-gion and culture of others withdelicacy.
What helps me most in mywork? The admirable witness ofthe Christians who I have hadthe grace to meet in countries inthe Middle and Far East and re-cently in Africa. Their con-vinced adherence to the faith,their loyalty to the Church, thefilial affection they have for thePope, all this is a great help foreveryone. Jesus is there inthese small communities. It isthe fa i th of s imple people,ready to welcome the bishopwho visits them, to ask for ablessing, because they knowthrough an intuitive faith thatthe Church is a family.
Of course, after my ordina-tion I did not imagine having tolive out my priesthood practic-ing dialogue, at first ‘diplomat-ic’, today ‘interreligious’, evenif, on the pictures of my priestlyordination, I had printed thewords of Paul to the Corinthi-ans: “In the name of Christ...we are ambassadors, as if Godwere appealing through us. Weimplore you on behal f ofChrist, be reconciled to God”(2Cor 5, 20).
Interreligious dialogue hasallowed me, I must confess, todeepen my faith, because whenI ask another how he lives hisfaith, I know that tomorrow Iwill be asked the same question.In today’s pluralistic world, weare increasingly called to ac-count for the “hope that is in us... but always with respect andkindness”, as recommended byPeter (1 Pt 3, 15-16).
Recently I was in Nigeria,and I was invited to visit a voca-t ional school, founded by apriest, where children are wel-comed for two years, both Mus-lims and Christians. I admiredthe mutual respect theyshowed, the joy of being togeth-er and also the religious dimen-sion that that priest was able toinstil l in them, without rela-tivism or syncretism.
I am convinced that it is pos-sible to live together in societiesravaged by so much violenceand to be, as believers, fer-ments of forgiveness, reconcili-ation and of peace.
Finally, more than once Ihave been asked if ‘Don Tau-ran’ can bear witness within hisinstitutional commitments.
I do not know if my life hasbeen a credible witness, but aftermy ordination I have alwaysbeen inhabited by a conviction: Imust always be first a priest,
whatever the circumstances.The important thing for a priestbut also for the faithful is that,through our daily lives, thosewho do not know Jesus, can‘guess’ His presence in ourmidst. Hence the importance ofa united and missionary Church.
In a few days in Rouen I willdeliver the panegyric of Joan ofArc, and meditate on somephrases that she uttered beforeshe died. I would like to mentionone that I learned from the veryyears of the seminary: “Dieufait ma route / God traces mypath”. The important thing inthe life of every Christian, andeven more so for a priest or abishop, is to cultivate the innerfreedom to allow God to realize,despite our limitations, His planto gather all mankind togetherin one family.
(Text assembled by Giovanni Cubeddu)
34 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
Church Interreligious Dialogue
Benedict XVI kneeling before the altar of the tomb of St Francis, with some leaders
and representatives of the Churches, of the Ecclesial Communities and Religions
of the world, on the occasion of the Assisi Meeting, 27 October 2011
IN MEMORY OF DON GIACOMO TANTARDINI27 march 1946 – 19 april 2012
“Come then, Lord Jesus... Come to me, seek me, find me,Take me in your arms, carry me”
(St Ambrose
Expositio in psalmum 118)
C O V E R
REMEMBRANCE
Jesus and John, detail of the LastSupper, Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel,
Padua
My friend Don Giacomo
36 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
“Remember your lead-ers who spoke theword of God to you;
Consider the outcome of theirway of life and imitate their faith”
(Heb 13, 7). Thus, the author ofthe Epistle to the Hebrews ex-horts us to bear in mind thosewho announced the Gospel to usand who have already departed.
He asks us to remember them,but not in that formal and, attimes pitiable way, that leads usto say “how good he was!”, aphrase often heard in the
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¬
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio during the homily in the Basilica of Saint Laurence Outside The Walls, 18 February 2012
“During the ceremony of confirmations in Saint LaurenceOutside the Walls we prayed for his health... and he expressedhis gratitude with a gesture that was of hope of healing and, at the same time, of trust”. Cardinal Bergoglio remembersGiacomo Tantardini, priest
by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJArchbishop of Buenos Aires
courtyard of cemeteries. Thattype of memory is a simple re-minder of social formalities. Thisasks us, rather, to rememberthem beginning from the fruitful-ness of their sowing in our midst.It asks us to remember them withthe memory of the heart, thatDeuteronomic memory thatbuilds on rock, that moulds livesand marks hearts. Yes, our heartis built on the memory of thosemen and women who havebrought us closer to sources of lifeand hope that can also be drawn
upon by those who follow us. It isthe memory of the inheritance wehave received and that we must,in turn, transmit to our children.
So, it is with this memory thatwe remember Don Giacomo,and we ask ourselves: what didhe leave us? What signs of himdo we find on the journey of ourlife? I dare simply say that he leftthe impression of a man-childwho never finished being sur-prised. Don Giacomo, the manof wonder; the man who let him-self be surprised by God and was
able to open up the path so thatthis wonder be born in others.
Don Giacomo, a man sur-prised that, as he watched theLord who called him, alwayswondered within himself, was
38 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
REMEMBRANCE
Thus, by grace, one can persevere on the path until the end: the man-child abandons himself to the arms of Jesus while he asks that this chalicemay pass, and is picked up and carried in the arms, his hands clasped and eyes open. Allowing himself to be surprised once again, for the greatest gift
Cardinal Bergoglio with Don Giacomo Tantardini in a photo from 2009
Allow the littlechildren to come to me, Carl Vogel
von Vogelstein,
Gallery of Modern
Art, Florence
hardly able to believe it, as Car-avaggio’s Matthew: I, Lord? Aman overwhelmed with wonderbefore this indescribable “super-abundance” of grace that winsover the mean abundance of sin,
that sin that diminishes us, al-ways; a man amazed that he felthimself sought, wanted andloved by God long before he him-self had sought him, wanted himand loved him; a man in wonder-
ment who, like those of LakeTiberias, did not dare ask Himwho He was because he knewHe was the Lord.
And this man in wonder, al-lowed himself, more than once,to be queried: “Do you loveme?”, to reply with the ardentsimplicity of love: “Lord, youknow that I love you”. And itwas so because this man-childnurtured his love with the simplebut wise readiness of the con-templation of all that Grace thatsurpassed him.
Don Giacomo was so. He hadnot lost the ability to be surprised;he reflected beginning with thewonder that he received andnourished in prayer. Sometimes,he gave the impression that thissensibility stressed him, made himtired or restless, and this is not un-usual in a man with a strong hu-man temperament, on whichGrace did not cease to work in hisconversion to meekness.
The last image I have of himmoves me: during the ceremonyof confirmations in Saint Lau-rence Outside the Walls, withhands clasped, his eyes openand in wonder, smiling and seri-ous at the same time. There, weprayed for his health... and heexpressed his gratitude with agesture that was of hope of heal-ing and, at the same time, oftrust. Thus, by grace, one canpersevere on the path until theend: the man-child abandonshimself to the arms of Jesuswhile he asks that this chalicemay pass, and is picked up andcarried in the arms, his handsclasped and eyes open. Allow-ing himself to be surprised onceagain, for the greatest gift.
I thank God our Lord for hav-ing known him. That “considerthe outcome of their way of lifeand imitate their faith” of theEpistle to the Hebrews is also di-rected to me.
Buenos Aires, 6 May 2012
393ODAYS - 5 - 2012
My friend Don Giacomo
He greeted me, Don Gia-como, with a shy caressof the eyes and a slight
childish blush when on 1 April2003 I was introduced to him inthe Aula Magna of the Universityof Padua, just before he startedthe third lesson of the cycle ofconferences devoted to the rele-vance of St Augustine.
The hall was full of young peo-ple waiting on his word. Don Gia-como’s face was also young, onwhich the watercolor hues of theskin formed a magical weave, ofpurple and amber. Even his voicewas attuned to the color, a verymobile and refined distillate of aninexhaustible source of ideas.
The reading and comment onthe Augustinian texts on graceand on the beauty of the Chris-tian faith echoed in the auditori-um for about an hour. In myimagination the figure of Don Gi-acomo grew enormously andwhen, at the end of the lecture,he asked me to prepare a contri-bution for the next lesson I didnot feel, though conscious of mylimitations, I could deny him that.
So it was that on 20 May 2003,introducing in the same auditoriumthe fourth lecture to be given byDon Giacomo, I dealt with the sub-ject of earthly justice in St Augus-tine and I illustrated its relevance es-pecially in its relations with politics.
Before addressing the argu-ments prepared for the lecture,dealing with a completely differ-ent subject, Don Giacomo, want-ed to intervene on the Augustin-ian conception of justice.
I confess that I listened withadmiring wonder at his ability toachieve in a very short time anexalted and complete summaryof the topic just treated.
A sign, I thought, of genuinespeculative talent and profoundknowledge of the thought of theBishop of Hippo which, havingmatured at the culmination of aprocess of identification with thelatter, it is necessary that I recall ithere in its essential features.
REMEMBRANCE
The conferences on the relevance of Saint Augustine of Hippo at the University of Padua became the occasion for friendship,profound and enduring, between a priest, the late Don Giacomo Tantardini, and a magistrate, Pietro Calogero,who consigned his heartfelt remembrance to 30Days
by Pietro Calogero
A friendship that blossomed under the signof St Augustine
40 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
Don Giacomo said, “I was es-pecially struck by three thingswhich the Attorney indicated to us,which seem to me profoundly Au-gustinian and profoundly relevant.The first is the suggestion that jus-tice in the human sense, whose ob-ligation it is to give each his own, isa bonum of the earthly city, is agood thing of that city that Augus-tine describes with the realismhighlighted in the episode of theencounter of the Emperor Alexan-der the Great with the pirate”(commenting on which he asks:“Remota itaque iustitia quid suntregna nisi magna latrocinia?”,thus setting justice aside, whatwould the kingdoms be reduced toif not to large bands of robbers?).
“The second thing that partic-ularly struck me”, continued DonGiacomo, “is that this justice hasas its basis human nature, the hu-man person. Augustine knowsthat original sin wounds humannature as such. Yet he defends hu-man nature affirming that no sinis such that it can destroy extremavestigia naturae, that last thresh-old of human nature created goodand in which habitat veritas, notin the sense that it creates truthbut in the sense that in human na-ture there is the possibility of rec-ognizing the truth, there is thepossibility of recognizing beauty,there is the possibility of recogniz-ing the good. A human nature inwhich, even though wounded byoriginal sin, the image of the Cre-ator is not destroyed. A humannature in which the openness tobeauty, truth, goodness, justiceremains. A wounded human na-ture, yet capax Dei”.
“The last thing for which I’mreally grateful to the Attorney”,concluded Don Giacomo, “arethe final suggestions about thehistoricity of human justice
413ODAYS - 5 - 2012
¬
The baptism of St Augustine
in a fourteenth-century fresco preserved
in the Church of the Hermits in Padua
and its relativity. I think this is thething that Augustine places morein evidence, in an original way, al-so in respect to other emphasesalso present in Christian philoso-phy: the historicity and relativityof the justice of the earthly city ascompared to that justice that is afree gift of God. But this historici-ty and this relativity are possibili-ties of productiveness, are oppor-tunities to improve all historicalmodels without imposing any-thing on others, they are facilita-tors of dialogue. Precisely be-cause of this historicity the De civ-itate Dei is of a continuous imme-diacy and evidence. Augustine de-scribes with realism things as theyare. This realism allows that noth-ing be imposed and optimizesevery positive possibility. Thissuggestion is what struck me mostof the things heard, along with theextensive quotations of Cicero inhis dialogue on the res publica.
It is very interesting and rele-vant that in the concept of man,the concept of the bona naturae,of the goods of nature, Augustinedoes not emphasise the Neopla-tonic tradition, but exalts the Ro-man tradition of Varro and Cice-ro. Even at the cultural level thisstrikes me as really one of the
most interesting and relevantthings. Augustine, who is nor-mally taken for a Platonic Chris-tian, in regard to the concept ofhuman nature and of the essen-tial goods of human nature valuesthe relativist Roman tradition (Isay relativist in the sense that firstthe Attorney Calogero spoke ofhistoricity and relativity) and notthe tradition of Neoplatonism”.
To conclude: a great teacher,Don Giacomo, who was able toreawaken in me by the enchanti-ng force of his culture and the en-gaging art of communication theold passion for ideas, life experi-ences, the highest sense of thehuman and the just of Augustine,landmark figure of the militantChristianity of the early centuries.
And at the same time a friend:a most sensitive friend, foreveryoung, humble, shy, reserved,transparent as the most transpar-ent porcelain manufactured byhuman hands never was.
Teacher and friend that I fre-quented tenderly unt i l a fewweeks before the great void dugby his unexpected death, and thatnow, with eyes raised to heaven, Iremember with regret.
Venice, 31 May 2012
REMEMBRANCE
Pietro Calogero, as a youngassistant prosecutor in Trevi-so, investigated the mas-sacre of Piazza Fontana, dis-covering the so-called ʻblacktrackʼ and exposing the falseleads and coverups carriedout by elements of the Italiansecret services, outlining thesubversive project commonlyknown as the ʻstrategy of ten-sionʼ. In Padua, in the ̓ seven-ties, he led the investigationthat led to the arrest of theleaders of Workers Autonomy(Negri, Scalzone Piperno),revealing the links betweenthis organization and the RedBrigades. He is currently At-torney General at the Court ofAppeal of Venice.
42 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
I confess that I listened with admiringwonder at his ability to achieve in a veryshort time an exalted and completesummary of the topic just treated.A sign, I thought, of genuine speculativetalent and profound knowledge of the thought of the Bishop of Hippo,matured at the culmination of a process of identification with the latter
The covers of the two books
by Don Giacomo Tantardini,
published by Città Nuova
in 2006 and 2009, which collect
his lectures dedicated
to the relevance of St Augustine
Dear brother bishops and priests, distinguishedauthorities, relatives and friends of the late DonGiacomo, brothers and sisters in the Lord!
It’s time to pay the last farewell to our dearDon Giacomo Tantardini. He left us quietly on
the evening of last Thursday, ending a life whol-ly oriented towards Christ who had ‘seized’him, as he said recalling a word used by St Paulin this regard in his letter to the Philippians(Phil 3, 12).
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The mosaic of the triumphal arch in the Basilica of Saint Laurence Outside the Walls, Rome
In the wake of the Beatitudes,the witness
of Don Giacomo Tantardini
Homily of Cardinal Angelo Sodano,
Dean of the College of Cardinals,
at the Holy funeral Mass for Don Giacomo Tantardini
Rome, Basilica of Saint Laurence Outside the Walls, 23 April 2012
¬
Today we have come in large numberswithin the walls of this beautiful Basilica thatwas so dear to him, to say our goodbyes. Anaffectionate, grateful farewell. For my part Ijoin willingly with all of you who loved himvery much, as is shown by the large crowdthat has come today to this temple. Together,dear friends, we will thank the Lord for hav-ing given him to us and then we will entrusthim to the hands of the Father Who is inHeaven, a Father “rich in mercy” or, to quotethe Latin words that wereso dear to Don Giacomo,a Father “dives in mis-ericordia” (cf. Eph 2, 4).
Our Te DeumMy brothers in everyMass, we thank the Lordfor the gifts He gives us inthe course of our lifetime.
Today, in particular, wewant to offer up to God ahymn of gratitude for thegift He gave to His Churchwith the life and works ofthis great priest.
One day long ago theGood Shepherd had madehim hear His mysteriousvoice telling him: “Come,follow me” (Mt 19, 21)and the generous youthfrom Barzio, in the land ofLecco, responded gener-ously to that invitation. Atthe age of twenty-four hebecame a minister of theLord and thus started thatgenerous mission, whichwas to lead him here toRome, in this ChristianRome that was so dear to him, where he spentwith holy ardor the greater part of his 42 yearsof priesthood. You are all witnesses of his affec-tion and his zeal.
The Acts of the Apostles tell us of Peterand John who after Pentecost preached theword of Christ ‘boldly’. I think that the Greek
word used by St Luke (cf. Acts 4, 29), the termparresia (παρρησία), well suits the style fol-lowed by Don Giacomo in his apostolate. Par-resia is translated by scholars with differentwords: boldness, courage, bravery, candor, butthey are all terms that indicate the inner spiritof our dear departed.
Indeed he seemed to be inspired by the mes-sage left by St Augustine to the Christians ofAfrica: “Without pride, be proud however ofthe truth”, or in that fine Ciceronian Latin
beloved by Don Giacomo “Sine superbia deveritate praesumite” (Contra litteras Petil-iani I, 31: PL 43, 259).
For the life of Don Giacomo, we want today tosing our Te Deum of thanksgiving to our Lord.
In the Canticle of the Creatures, St Francisthanked God for ‘Sister Death’. We today want,
44 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
REMEMBRANCE
An image of the Requiem Mass for Don Giacomo Tanatardini
first of all, to thank the Lord for ‘sister life’, forthe life granted to Don Giacomo, the life of na-ture and especially for the more precious life,which is that of grace!
Our Requiem MassSecondly, my brothers, our Eucharist todayis also intended as a prayer of intercession.The Christian faith teaches us that nothingless than pure, less than holy enters the pres-ence of God. In fact, the Book of Proverbs in
the Holy Scripture tells us that “even therighteous may fall seven times a day” (Prov24, 16).
For this reason the Church, our Mother andTeacher, has always taught us to offer prayers,and especially the Eucharistic Sacrifice, so thatour dead, properly purified, may attain the be-
at i f ic v is ion of God (Catechism of theCatholic Church, no. 1032).
The light of faithMy brothers, our celebration of the Eucharistis then completely illuminated by the splendorof these pages of the Word of God, which wehave just heard.
In the first reading we heard some words ofgreat hope: “The souls of the righteous are inthe hands of God” (Wis 3, 1), and then we sang
the responsorial psalm: “Merciful and graciousis the Lord” (Ps 102): a vision of hope.
In the second reading, the Apostle Paul wroteto the Romans already two thousand years ago,tried by the persecution and martyrdom of somany of their brethren: “Whether we live or die,we are always of the Lord” (Rm 14, 7-9).
453ODAYS - 5 - 2012
In the wake of the Beatitudes, the witness of Don Giacomo Tantardini
¬
Today, in particular,
we want to offer up to God
a hymn of gratitude
for the gift He gave
to His Church with the life
and works of this great priest.
One day long ago the Good
Shepherd had made him hear
his mysterious voice telling
him: “Come, follow me”
(Mt 19, 21)
Cardinal Angelo Sodano during the homily
The Gospel, then, once again reproposedthe message of the Beatitudes to us. It is thatgrandiose and demanding message, bywhich our late Don Giacomo was inspired.Because of this we are confident that whatChrist promised His disciples wil l comeabout for him: “Yours will be the Kingdom ofHeaven!”.
The Easter AlleluiaWith this vision of faith, we can today takeleave of our dear brother, Don Giacomo. Atthe end of Mass, the liturgy will put a touchingsong of the ancient Christian tradition on ourlips: In Paradisum deducant te Angeli, maythe angels accompany you to Paradise!
And today, we’ l l a lso s ing this sweetmelody, keeping in our hearts the spirit of the
Easter Alleluia. “Praise the Lord” is preciselythe original meaning of the word “Alleluia”that has been resonating in our churches fortwo thousand years. Yes, today also we wantto praise the Lord! Today and always, we willsing Alleluia!
ConclusionTo Most Holy Mary, to whom our dear Don
Giacomo nurtured a filial devotion, we thenentrust the blessed soul of him who left us.
The Loreto Litanies, so called because theyarose in Loreto, invoke Mary as Ianua Coeli,Gate of Heaven. May she welcome into herloving arms her beloved son and lovingly intro-duce him to the definitive encounter with HerSon Jesus, in the eternal home in Heaven.And so be it! q
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REMEMBRANCE
Indeed he seemed to be inspired by the message left
by St Augustine to the Christians of Africa: “Without pride,
be proud however of the truth”, or in that fine Ciceronian Latin
beloved by Don Giacomo “Sine superbia de veritate praesumite”
The Basilica of Saint Laurence Outside the Walls crowded with faithful during the Requiem Mass
Reading
Meeting with Don Giacomo Tantardiniat the Fabio Locatelli Cultural Center of Bergamo
15 December 2000
CHRISTIANITY:A SIMPLE STORY
Repose on the flight into Egypt, detail, Caravaggio, Doria Pamphili Gallery, Rome
Don Giacomo Tantardini
Let me start with a verse from a poem by Charles Péguy that summarizes
somewhat what we have now heard. Péguy says in one of his poems to the Vir-
gin of Chartres: “They have said much, O Queen of Apostles / We have lost the tastefor speeches / we no longer have altars, if not yours / we know nothing more than asimple prayer”.
I believe that when Péguy at the beginning of the century went on a pil-
grimage to Chartres to ask for the grace of healing for his children... the chil-
dren were not baptized: Péguy cohabited, so to say, with a Jewish woman who
had refused to baptize the children. So Péguy could never have a Christian
marriage and could not receive the sacraments of the Church, and yet I be-
lieve that Péguy was the greatest poetic witness of these last centuries, the
greatest after Dante. The Lord’s grace is given according to the measure of the
gift of Christ, as He wants.
“They have said much, O Queen of Apostles / We have lost the taste for speeches /we no longer have altars, if not yours / we know nothing more than a simple prayer”.But even so I have to talk this evening. So I would like to say just three things
that I think are things that the Church’s Tradition, that the simplicity of Tradi-
tion (simple prayer recalls the simplicity of Tradition), that the simplicity of the
Christian Tradition, especially for Christmas, says again, repeats.
1. There is a dogmatic expression that the modern world, especially in re-
cent decades, the world, that world that is in the Church, especially the world
that is in the Church, has tried as if to censor. Instead, nothing of human life is
understood and Christianity is not understood if we do not start from here:
original sin. Original sin. It is that all men, except Mary, are born with original
sin. Nothing is understood of life, nothing is understood – says the last Ecu-
menical Council of the Church in a very beautiful expression – of human so-
ciety, if you do not start from here: that men are born evil. As Jesus says: “Youwho are evil”. “Why do you call me good? Only God is good”. “Si homo non periisset,Filius hominis non venisset”, so St Augustine summarizes the Church’s con-
science: if man had not sinned, the Son of man would not have come.
I would like to take the beginning of Alessandro Manzoni’s hymn Il Natale[Christmas]...
Alessandro Manzoni in many ways is not, as it were, a contemporary au-
thor, because he describes in his wonderful novel, I promessi sposi [The Be-
trothed], the Christian condition as already given and therefore does not
talk about us, because today that condition no longer exists. Perhaps the
most current page of The Betrothed is that which describes the conversion of
the Unnamed, when, after that night, he sees the people glad to go and wel-
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come Cardinal Federico and asks himself: “What do all these people have to behappy about?”. This is the most contemporary page. “What do all these peoplehave to be happy about?”. And the curiosity to see why these people are happy
arises in his heart. This is the page that describes how one can become a
Christian today... Alessandro Manzoni’s ancestors are from my country
which is Barzio, a small town above Lecco, and the grandfather of Alessan-
dro Manzoni was called Alessandro because the patron saint of Barzio, as
the patron of Bergamo, is Saint Alexander. And I think that also the author
of The Betrothed is called Alessandro because of this... Other reasons make
him close to me. Although, I repeat, Manzoni in many ways is not relevant,
he is certainly not like Péguy.
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God calls Adam and Eve after the Original Sin, Palatine Chapel, Palermo
CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
The hymn‘Christmas’ begins with the image of that mass of rock that fell
from the mountain top and now lies on the bottom of the valley: “Therewhere it fell, immobile / it lies in its indolent imposing mass, / Neither, to changefor centuries / nor to see the sun / from its ancient summit / If a friendly force / doesnot draw it up on high”. It is impossible that the rock that falls from the
mountain-top into the valley can see the sun again from the summit, if a
friendly force does not take it and carry it back up. “Thus lay the miserable /Child of the first fault”. So lay man, child of the first sin. Like that. “Where theproud neck / could no longer raise itself“. And this I think is the most realistic
definition of original sin.
What is original sin? Don Giussani, in the last volume of the series that col-
lects the dialogues in a house of the Memores Domini, says: “What is original
sin? What is the pride of original sin? It is the affirmation of oneself before that ofreality”. Man sees nothing but himself. Fallen from that height he does not see
anything other than himself. The affirmation of himself before that of reality.
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Cain kills Abel, Monreale Cathedral, Palermo
There is a verse of the hymn that I will read in its entirety because it is so realis-
tic, “Whoever among those born to hate”. Born to hate. Like that. The human con-
dition is like this. A few weeks ago it struck me that a non-Christian, non-
Catholic writer, Norberto Bobbio, receiving an award from the University of
Stuttgart, quoted Hegel (Hegel master of all, unfortunately, in recent decades),
quoted Hegel in one of his few realistic expressions when he says that humanhistory is none other than a great slaughter-house. It’s so. Human history is none
other than a great slaughter-house. Human history, St Augustine says, taking
the example from Rome, from the history of Rome that was founded by a frat-
ricide, goes from murder to murder. “Whoever among those born to hate”. Born to
hate. Not for the creating act. The creation is good. But in fact, for original sin,
one is born to hate. And even good things, beautiful things, immediately decay
into strangeness. And from this condition of original sin experience can be
gained, man gains experience. Great poetry does nothing other than talk of
this. To recognize the effects of original sin faith is not necessary, human intel-
ligence is enough. Not to recognize the effects of original sin is a question of
non-intelligence, is a question of illusion, is a question of idealism.
“Whoever among those born to hate, / Whoever was the person, / Whoever inac-cessible to the Holy One...”. How christian Manzoni is at this moment. “Inacces-
sible”: to the Holy One whom he cannot reach, to the unknown Holy One, to
the Holy One whose face is unknown. And if someone says God exists but
does not see Him (St Bernard says in a Breviary reading at Christmas time), af-
ter a while, how can he recognize that He exists, if he cannot come to Him, if
precipitated to the bottom of the ravine, he cannot arrive to the light of the be-
ginning, to the light of the dawn of the first beginning of creation? How can
he say that it exists? “Whoever was the person, / Who to the inaccessible Holy One /Could say: forgive?”. Forgive! “Who to thank, who to curse?”, asked Cesare
Pavese in one of the last sentences of his journal. Who to thank, who to curse
if the Mystery is there but is inaccessible, is there but without a face, is there
but incomprehensible, is there but cannot be known? “Make a new everlastingcovenant? / From the infernal victor / To tear away his prey?”. Who could tear his
prey away from the devil?
This is the first suggestion: one is born with original sin. And the dogma
of the Church says that original sin injures man in naturalibus, in his naturaldimensions. It not only makes consistence impossible. For example, one
knows that abortion is a sin, but then is inconsistent. But it is not only that.
Original sin also prevents in the long run the realization that abortion is a
sin, because original sin injures humans in their natural intelligence: be-
cause of original sin intelligence as such is itself obfuscated, not only is the
will weakened. So even what is natural, what is creaturely, even what is
against the heart, against the creaturely gesture, man is clouded in recog-
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CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
nizing it. Not that he cannot recognize it, but he is cloudy inside. Reality
cannot be understood, the world cannot be understood if we do not start
from here. The world we live in cannot be understood, the circumstances in
which we are cannot be understood.
2. What remains in this condition? The inaccessible Mystery, which has no
face, and man, to whom the light (the light means the surprise of creation,
which is good), this light, is no longer familiar. It is no longer cara beltà, no
longer dear beauty, the creation, but it is strangeness, enmity, so much so that
Cain kills Abel. What is left? The heart remains. The heart is wounded, but the
heart remains the heart. This is the other great thing that Catholicism says.
Wounded, clouded in the recognition of the true and weakened in the ability to
be consistent with the true, yet the heart remains. The heart of man remains.
The heart that our mother, our father gave us, that God has given us through
them, remains the heart. That is, the heart remains waiting, waiting to meet
something. The heart remains a plea to be content, the heart remains a plea
for happiness. The wounded heart remains heart.
I will read two passages of the finest poem of Leopardi Alla sua donna [To
His Lady], when Leopardi says that what he wanted in a woman’s beauty was
a greater beauty, a beauty that could finally satisfy the longing of the heart.
But he adds that this was a dream from when he was an adolescent. Becoming
an adult one realizes that this dream is no longer possible. “No hope of seeingyou alive remains for me now / I no longer have any hope of seeing you alive”. O
beauty, I no longer have any hope of seeing you alive. I no longer have hope,
here in this life, of meeting that unexpected thing, that unpredictable thing,
that my heart is waiting for. “Already at the dawn / of my dark, uncertain day”.
Human genius lies in the prophecy of Christ. Not in the sense that it antici-
pates Christ, not in the sense that it makes Christian speeches. But in the
sense that it awaits Him, requesting or cursing, but it awaits Him. “Already atthe dawn / of my dark, uncertain day”. “Uncertain”. If the Holy One, if the Mys-
tery is inaccessible, what can man do if not be uncertain? What can man do?
Man cannot be condemned, man cannot be condemned for his nihilism,
man cannot be condemned for his ‘non faith’. What can be done, if the Mys-
tery has no face? What can be done? Also because nihilism (St Augustine in
this anticipates and responds to Nietzsche) arises from the fact that one real-
izes that the God one says he affirms is a projection of himself, that is that he
realizes he doesn’t exist. If God is a projection, an image of oneself, one realizes
that that God does not exist, he is nothing. Nihil est, he is nothing. “… of mydark, uncertain day, / I imagined you a fellow traveler on this arid round”. I thought
to meet you in this arid land, to meet what the heart is waiting for. “But there’sno thing / that resembles you on earth”. But on earth I met nothing, nothing that
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merited my heart to its very depth. So many things (Leopardi also had many
women), but nothing, no one who really deserved my heart to the very bot-
tom. “But there’s no thing / that resembles you on earth. And if someone / had a facelike yours, in act and word / she’d be, though something like you, far less beautiful”.
Here is the insight that can only be grace: but even if there was one thing that
looked like you in the face, in acts and words, “she’d be, though something likeyou, far less beautiful” than what my heart waits for.
This poem ends with a prayer, the most beautiful prayer of an atheist, be-
cause Giacomo Leopardi was an atheist and a materialist. No devotee wrote a
prayer like this to the Mystery that was revealed: “Whether you are only one ofthe eternal ideas / to eternal wisdom you refuse to be / arrayed in sensible form”. If
you, O beauty, if you, O what the heart is waiting for, if you, O what the heart
pleads, if you, happiness, are one of the eternal ideas, that refuses to be
clothed in sensible form.“To know the pains of mortal life / in transitory spoils”,
and here on earth refuse to experience the troubles of this life that runs to-
wards death, “From here, where years are both ill-starred and brief, / accept thishymn from your unnoticed lover”.
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The offering of Abel and Cain, Palatine Chapel, Palermo
“From here, where years are both ill-starred and brief”. This is Christian real-
ism. From an atheist, but it is Christian realism. It is human realism and
therefore a prophecy of Who created the heart like this. From here where
things pass by instantly. The beautiful things also pass by instantly, even your
baby’s smile, that of the child, even affection for the woman you love. “Fromhere, where years are both ill-starred and brief, / accept this hymn from your unno-ticed lover”. The heart remains, the heart that waits for something like that. But
man (and we still use an expression of Augustine, who was in the Church per-
haps the most humanly fascinating witness to this heart), man is far from thisheart, fugitivus cordis sui. Man is far away from this plea and man is satisfied.
He is satisfied. And what is he satisfied with? With usury, lust and power. And
there is no religion that holds. He is satisfied with these three things, money,
lust and power, those who believe in God and those who do not believe. And
this is one of the most impressive things about De civitate Dei of Augustine.
Belief in God does not in itself change life, in itself it does not change life. All
the books of Augustine’s De civitate Dei are relevant. In the eighth, ninth and
tenth books Augustine speaks of the philosophers who have known God,
who recognized the existence of God. Yet in the end “they thought they had to
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The Annunciation, with the scene of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden after the Original Sin, Beato Angelico, the Prado Museum, Madrid
offer divine honor of rituals and sacrifices to the devil”. Satanism can also be the
consequence of proclaiming oneself a believer in God, because belief in God
does not really change your life. It is something else that changes your life. If
belief in God changed life there was no need for Mary to give birth.
3. It is because of this that we celebrate Christmas. Do you understand? Be-
cause if belief in God changed life, there was no need for what happened two
thousand years ago. Not only: we could not be grateful as we are grateful.
When two thousand years ago in that country, on the border of Palestine, inGalilee of the Gentiles, the angel Gabriel was sent to a Jewish girl named Mary...
It all started there. The inaccessible Holy One, the One who created the heart
good... (but original sin brought about this condition because of which man is
in fact satisfied, cannot but be satisfied with lust, money and power), the inac-
cessible Holy One became flesh in the womb of a woman. A fact. That simple
story began there. And it began precisely as a story, as a simple story. It started
with “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee”. And this little Jewish girl, who
did not understand immediately, was distressed and wondered what this
greeting meant. And the angel said to her: “Fear not, Mary, you have found fa-
vor with God”. And then this little girl expressed that “Yes”, that ‘’Here I am”,
due to which man has hope of being saved. Without that “Here I am”, all the
belief in God does not give hope to people. That “Here I am” begins a story, a
simple story. A story that says that He Who began like this with Mary (“You
have found favor with God”) is He, is He Who carries out this beginning. In
fact think of the Virgin. Think: she remained in this “Here I am”, even when
the angel left her. Think of the comfort... (this is one of the things that impress-
es me most, that most moves me in regard to the Madonna), think of the first
comfort that she had, the first confirmation that what she had heard was true,
when like every woman she realized she was pregnant. It must have been
something other worldly. Because it meant that the promise was real, that
promise to which she had immediately said “Yes”, to which she had immedi-
ately said, “Here I am“, that promise was real, that which Another had started
would be fulfilled. And likewise the other comfort that amazes and moves me
is when the angel says to St Joseph in a dream: “Joseph, son of David, do not
hesitate to take Mary as your wife: for that which is born in her is of the Holy
Spirit”. And think, because we can imagine ... (it is some thing else compared
to all the religions of this world, it is something else. It is a story of men, of
youngsters, they were two youngsters), think what it was for Mary when
Joseph took her with him. It was another confirmation, another confirmation
that that meeting, that “Hail, full of grace” was real. And then they both went
to Elizabeth, because the angel had told her that Elizabeth was also pregnant,
and this fact also confirmed that “Hail, full of grace, do not fear, Mary”.
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CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
Why is Christianity a simple story? It’s a simple story (we use a word that
the Church has used for two thousand years) because it is grace, because it is
an event and therefore a story of grace. If it was not grace, it would be some-
thing complicated. Why is human religiosity not simple? Because it is born
of man. Because it is the good attempt of man, beginning from created things,
to recognize the Creator. But this is not a simple thing, it’s something ex-
hausting. The dogma of faith says: it is an exhausting thing, a thing for the few,
something that, even when religiosity reaches its goal (the Mystery exists), is
mixed with errors. These are the words of the dogma of the Church. Not only
is it for the few, not only is it exhausting, but when one arrives at saying “God
exists”, this assertion is mixed with errors. Instead, two thousand years ago
something that is very simple started. It was promised to that girl that she
would conceive and give birth. And in those nine months, very many most
human facts... First of all she realized she was pregnant (and that her stom-
ach became bigger as the stomach of any pregnant woman). And the witness
of Joseph who, in obedience to the Mystery greater than himself, took her
with him. And the witness of her cousin Elizabeth: she also had a son. And
that Christmas, that first Christmas, when for the first time the eyes of two
youngsters, Mary and Joseph, saw God. They saw God. And so Christianity
began. They did not believe that God exists, no, this is also believed by Mus-
lims who in this religiosity are perhaps more religious than us, but they did
not see. They did not see – but yet it came about – and in religiosity and
morality they may be more moral and more religious than us. Because of
this Paul VI was great when in Rome he didn’t do anything to prevent the
building of the mosque, and in fact, to those who told him he had to obtain
reciprocity, he said the Church does not lower itself to this level. But it’s an-
other thing. Christianity is something else compared to all the religions of
the world, to all the morals of the world. It is that two thousand years ago a
boy and a girl, Joseph and Mary, saw God with their eyes, not in a mystical vi-
sion. Mary gave birth. And Joseph and she looked at him in wonder. This is
how the Christian story began. They were there looking at God. And then
that same night, the angels announced to the shepherds that in the city of
David (for God is faithful to his promises), “in the city of David a Savior has
been born for you”. And the shepherds went, they went and saw a baby. That
child was God. So when in the Creed we say “God from God, Light from Light,true God from true God [that child], begotten, not made, consubstantial with theFather, through him all things were created, for us men and for our salvation [for us
men, for man who is content with lust, usury and power, for this man, not
for men of good will (the good will is His), but for this concrete man], for usmen and for our salvation He came down from heaven and through the Holy SpiritHe became incarnate...”.
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I add this. After Mary and Joseph, after those thirty years in which the Eter-
nal, Who began to exist and grow over time (the Eternal, remaining eternal,
began to exist and grow over time and to count the days, hours, months and
years, like every child), after those thirty years that He lived in Nazareth, in
obedience to His father and His mother, the mission began, when the first
two, that afternoon, on the banks of the Jordan, met Him, when John and An-
drew, after John the Baptist had indicated “Behold the Lamb of God, behold
Him Who taketh away the sins of the world”, followed Him. They followed
Him attracted by Him. And then Jesus turned to these two young men – An-
drew was married, so he will have been a little older, but John was just a
youngster – He asked of these two young people a question: “What do you
seek?”. This thing always strikes me. They did not respond to Him we seek the
truth, we seek happiness, they didn’t even say to Him that we seek the Messi-
ah. They had Him whom their heart sought in front of them. They had Him in
front of them. The heart is infallible, in this the heart is infallible. There is a
beautiful thesis of Catholic theology that speaks of the infallibility of faith.
The infallibility of the magisterium is secondary with respect to the infallibility
of faith. Faith is infallible. What they were looking for, what the heart wanted,
they had Him before them. So to that question, “What do you seek?”, they
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Repose on the Flight into Egypt, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Pushkin Museum, Moscow
respond by asking the only thing that could be asked. When one encounters
what the heart desires one can only ask that this thing will remain. “Master,
where do you live?” That is “where are you staying?”. Where are you staying, in
order to stay with you? Publicly, here. There, with Mary and Joseph, let us say,
privately. The thirty years of private life, private but with very many public
episodes: the shepherds, then the Magi, then when twelve years old in the
Temple... But still a private story. Here is the beginning of the public story, the
story of why we’re here tonight. Because of which there exists in the world this
simple story of people amazed because they have met Him. A simple story:
they were amazed because they met him and then having once met it depends
on Him, it does not depend primarily on you, it depends on Him to remain
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The calling of Matthew, Caravaggio, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
Reading
with you. It is simple because of this. Otherwise – given that the beginning of
Christianity is grace (if one is Christian, this must be said) – a different dy-
namic is introduced. No! Once met, what happens? What have you done to
meet Him? Nothing. So, look, do not busy yourself, because it depends on
Him. It depends on Him Who met you and remains faithful. It depends on
Him that He remains faithful, it does not depend primarily on your faithful-
ness. It depends on Him. It is simple because of this. It is simple because not
only does He meet you, not only is it He who went to the meeting in the be-
ginning, but it depends on Him Who remained with the first ones, it depends
on Him that the day after He did it over again from the first ones, it depends
on Him that the day after that ...
Andrew went home that night and said to his brother Peter: “We have met
the Messiah”. Another thing that amazes me is to think that Peter the first time
he caught a glimpse humanly of the Mystery made flesh was looking at the
face of his brother. He had never seen Andrew’s face like that, he’d never seen
his brother’s face like that, because grace has a reverberation in the human. It
is visible, grace. It has an invisible source, but has a visible reverberation, the
reflection of grace is seen, it is seen, and is unmistakable. The reflection of
grace is infallible, it is unmistakable for any other kind of beauty. It is the
beauty for which the heart was created. So it is not only He who comes for-
ward to be met, but it He Who remains, so much so that the next day, when
He saw Peter, He said to him: “You are Simon son of John, you will be called
Peter”. And so from two they became three, and they went on like that for
three years... Just like that. But think in those three years, think of who took
the initiative. It was not of those who followed Him, the initiative was always
His. Like when the rich young man, invited to follow Him, indeed, loved by
Him... Jesus looked at him and became tender, He loved him. Yet he didn’t
follow Him, and then Jesus said that it was impossible for a rich man to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven, and Peter asked: “But then who can be saved?”. And
here is one of the most beautiful phrases of the Gospel: “And Jesus looking at
them [looking at them, not theologising, looking at them] said: “For God
nothing is impossible”. Looking at them, because what was evident to Him as
Mystery, as a man He learned from the things that happened, as we learn from
what happens. If Peter was there, if John was there, if Matthew was there (I was
thinking today, seeing the paintings of Caravaggio, I thought of the Calling ofMatthew by Caravaggio in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome), if Zacchaeus came
down full of joy it means that for God nothing is impossible. Because
Matthew was rich, indeed collected the money for the Roman invaders, and
Zacchaeus, the richest man in Jericho... if they were there, it means that for
God nothing is impossible. Jesus too, as man learned the nature of the Mys-
tery from what happened. What He knew as God, as man He learned from
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CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
experience. St Bernard says in one of the most wonderful phrases on the mys-
tery of Jesus: what by nature He knew from all eternity (that for God nothing
is impossible) He learned from human experience. He also was amazed
when he saw Zacchaeus come running down. Consider the episode of Zac-
chaeus. This little man who had to climb a tree to see Him pass. This little
man who was the leader of illegal gangs in the city of Jericho, and Jesus Who is
passing by, looked at him and said, “Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house”.
He said nothing, he did not reply at all. Full of joy he came down. And then he
distributed four times what he had stolen. But then, then! Immediately, full
of joy he came down and ran to his house. Then it is simple, it is easy not only
because the beginning is grace, but because each step is grace. St Thomas says
in one of his most beautiful phrases (the Catholic Church, also using this
phrase, last year, signed a document with the Lutherans, which said that on
the essential aspects of the doctrine of justification Catholics and Lutherans
recognize the same thing): “Gratia facit fidem”, grace creates faith. Faith is the
recognition of this attraction, faith is the recognition of this meeting, faith is
the recognized wonder of this meeting. “Gratia facit fidem non solum quandofides incipit esse in homine”, grace creates faith not only when faith begins to ex-
ist in a man, “sed quamdiu fides durat”, but for every moment that faith re-
mains. In every moment, not only at the beginning, in every moment the ini-
tiative is His.
This afternoon I visited the Caravaggio exhibition here in Bergamo. Beauti-
ful. We were guided by a priest who very humanly, in a very beautiful manner,
described things. At some point, however, he said that Caravaggio expresses
the struggle of faith. I would not say so. Faith, when it happens, is never ex-
hausting. ‘Non-faith’ is easy. Yes, this ‘non-faith’ is easy. “Men of little faith,
why do you doubt?”. It’s very easy, even for those who followed Him, ‘non-
faith’ is very easy, it is easy to doubt, it is easy to curse, this yes. Because the
grace of Baptism erases original sin, but not the consequences of original sin.
‘Non-faith’ is very easy, doubt is very easy, betrayal is very easy. Think of Peter:
“Even if they all abandon you I will never leave you”. Three hours later... Three
hours later! First of all, half an hour later, he had fallen asleep. And then,
three hours later, he betrayed Him. Betrayal is very easy. But faith is easier. It is
easier to have faith. If not, it means that you do not know what it is. It is easier,
because when Jesus, after the betrayal, looked at him, it was easier to burst in-
to tears, easier than anything else. Faith is easier. A difficult faith doesn’t exist.
It’s easier. It is a non-Christian image of faith to say that faith is difficult. It’s
easy, it’s even easier than betrayal. Think of that poor man Peter, that poor sin-
ner Peter: when Jesus looked at him, it was the easiest thing in life to burst in-
to tears, it was the easiest thing in life to begin to cry. It was the easiest thing in
life to say: “How you love me, how you love me. And yet I betrayed you”. Faith
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is easy, it’s easy. There is no faith (this is a dogma of faith), there is no faith if
the Holy Spirit doesn’t give the sweetness (speaking of sweetness, sweetness
cannot be difficult, that would be inhuman), the sweetness to adhere. It is the
Spirit, it is grace that gives the sweetness to adhere. The word sweetness is
used: easier than that! Faith is easy. The instant afterwards, you may not be-
lieve. The next instant, you can swear, the next instant you can chase after
money, lust and power. But if one has experienced this sweetness, he can run
after it like all the others, but yet this sweetness is the easiest thing, is the easi-
est thing. And to cry after having chased after lust, money, power, to cry, be-
cause this sweetness comes back, because that look concerns you, beginning
to cry is the easiest thing. Nothing is easier for the child who, after all the
caprices of this world, abandons himself to the arms of dad and mum, there is
nothing easier. You say it is difficult for the child? It would be inhuman if he
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Repentance of Peter, Jusepe de Ribera, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
didn’t abandon himself. It’s the easiest thing in the world to abandon oneself
to the arms of dad and mum.
I wanted to say one last thing. What does this grace without which he can
do nothing ask of man? “May Your grace always precede and accompany us”, says
one of the prayers of the Church. Lex orandi legem statuat credendi, so said the
ancient formula that Pius XII cited, but perhaps foreseeing what would hap-
pen, he then changed to Lex credendi legem statuat orandi and that is that the
law of faith establishes the law of prayer. But the old formula said that it is the
law of prayer that establishes the law of faith. St Augustine, in response to the
Pelagians, normally used this argument: You say that faith is not grace, then
why does the Church pray that an unbeliever be converted? Either those
prayers are just a way of saying, or it is God who converts the heart. You say that
staying in the faith is not grace, but then why do we ask in the Lord’s prayer
not to lead us into temptation? If it was our capability to overcome tempta-
tion we wouldn’t pray not to lead us into temptation. So it means that not to
let ourselves be overwhelmed by temptation is grace. Either the Church says
its prayers as a way of saying, or you must accept as Augustine said to the hereti-
cal Pelagians, that every step of the Christian life is grace, otherwise you
62 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
The calling of Peter and Andrew, Caravaggio, Royal Gallery Collection, Hampton Court Palace, London
Reading
should delete the prayers of the Church. “May Your grace always precede and ac-company us, O Lord”. So what is man’s part in this journey in which the initia-
tive is His? “If you do not take the initiative I do not start out”, said Pope Lu-
ciani the day before his sudden death. On Thursday night he died and on
Wednesday he made the gesture that the Pope makes every Wednesday,
speaking of charity. A gesture entirely focused on this one thing: if you do not
take the initiative I do not start out. And he said, what does it mean to take the
initiative? (and he quoted St Augustine, one of the most marvelous phrases of
Augustine). It does not mean only that He attracts my freedom, but it also
means that He makes me happy to be attracted. I am not only attracted, but
He gives me the pleasure (Augustine specifically says voluptas, pleasure) of be-
ing attracted. If He does not give me the pleasure of adhering, if He does not
give me the pleasure of following Him, I cannot follow Him. Not only does
He attract the will, but He gives the pleasure of being attracted. It is one of the
most beautiful pages in the ordinary magisterium of the Church, that speech
on charity by Pope Luciani of twenty-two years ago.
But what then is possible for man? I say it with the words of Don Giussani
in an article on the Holy Rosary published in Avvenire on Sunday 30 April (in
my opinion one of the most beautiful things absolutely, not only by Gius-
sani, but of the whole Church in recent decades), “The answer to this Grace is
completely in the prayer of which we are capable”. The answer to this grace
(which is not just the beginning but at each step) is completely in the prayer
of which we are capable. Our answer is a prayer, it is a plea. Our answer is the
surprise of a plea, a plea like that of John and Andrew: “Where do you live?”.
Faced with something so beautiful our response is: “Stay!”. Faced with so
great a sweetness, our response is: “Do not forsake me, stay!”. Our whole an-
swer is this, and it’s all the child’s response when his dad and mum love him.
“Our answer is a prayer. It is not a particular ability, it is just the momentum ofprayer”. It may be the baby’s cry that calls to dad and mum to love him. The
crying. In the ancient liturgy there was a mass to ask for the gift of tears. We
plead a lot more with tears than with words. The impetus, the impetus of a
plea. Habet et laetitia lacrimas suas. Thus St Ambrose. When one is happy with
this sweetness, this joy has its tears. Basically, joy is expressed only by crying.
So Giussani says in that article: “Our answer is a prayer, it is not a particular
ability, it is just the momentum of prayer”. Giussani adds (I read this because
it takes up Péguy again with whom we started): “We enter the month of May
[now we’re in the Christmas novena]. The Christian people for centuries has
been blessed [the beginning is His: blessed] and confirmed in striving to-
ward salvation [confirmed: because if He does not confirm, although we
have encountered Him, we do not stay in the encounter. Thus the simplicity
of Tradition. For example, a dogma of the Council of Trent says: “If one is in
633ODAYS - 5 - 2012
¬
CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
grace, without a special help of grace, one cannot remain in grace”. Do you
understand how all of Christian life is supported by His initiative? If one is in
grace, without a special gift of grace that may be pleaded, without an attrac-
tion that is renewed, one does not remain in that attraction. You cannot live
on a past love, you cannot live on the attraction of yesterday, not even on the
attraction of a moment ago. You cannot. You can only live of the present. So
if anyone is in grace, to remain in grace the renewal of this special help is nec-
essary]. The Christian people for centuries has been blessed and confirmed
in striving toward salvation, I believe, especially by one thing: the Holy
Rosary”. Christian life is simple, it’s simple. After decades of many words, so
many struggles and so many challenges... There was an Angelus in which
Pope Luciani said: “Less battles and more prayers”. The Christian people have
been blessed and confirmed, I believe, by one thing: the recitation of the
Holy Rosary.
And I end up by reading some verses of the poem by Péguy with which I
began. He describes the remaining in this grace. “This is the place of the worldwhere everything becomes easy”. Easy even sin, even betrayal, like Peter. Easy al-
so the temptation to chase after lust, money and power. But easy to be
hugged again. And to weep in gratitude. Easier. The difference is that those
who do not experience it do not know this much easier thing. They know all
the other things, but do not know this much easier one. Easier, more beauti-
ful, more simple. Everything becomes easier. “The regret, the departure and alsothe event”. Also the recurrence of this wonder is easy: in Paradise it will be
everlasting, here it is easy, here it is easy for it to happen again, not perennial.
And St Augustine again says: the Lord also to His elect, to His holy ones can at
certain times not give the winning attraction to himself because thus, experi-
encing being sinners, they place hope in Him and not in themselves. Easy.
“And the temporary parting, the separation, / The only corner of the world whereeverything becomes docile. ... This that everywhere else requires an examination /Here it is no more than the effect of a defenceless youth”. What everywhere else re-
quires an examination so that you have to prove yourself to be good. Also at
home it is so, many times. You have to prove to be good. You cannot be a
poor sinner. You have to prove to be good. Thus, to the fact of being a sinner
like everyone else, you also add hypocrisy, which is the greater sin, that of the
Pharisees. “This that everywhere else requires an examination / Here it is no morethan the effect of a defenceless youth. / This that everywhere else asks for a postpone-ment / Here it is only a present weakness. / / This that everywhere else requires proof /Here is only the fruit of a poor tenderness. / This that everywhere else demands atouch of skill / Here is only the result of humble ineptitude. ... This that everywhereelse is a compulsion of rule / Here is only an impetus and an abandonment”. As
Giussani says. Only the momentum of prayer, only the impetus of a plea. As
64 3ODAYS - 5 - 2012
Reading
the child during the day can break a glass many times. He might break it a
thousand times and a thousand times say “Mum, help me not to break it”,
this is the Christian man. “Mum, help me not to break it”. And it’s easier, hap-
pier for the child in his mother’s arms to say: “Mum, help me not to break it”,
than even not to break the glass. “This that everywhere else is a compulsion of rule/ Here is only an impetus and an abandonment; / This that everywhere else is a harshpenalty / Here is only a weakness that is raised. ...This that everywhere else would bea hard effort / Here is only simplicity and quietness; / This that everywhere else is therough bark / Here is only the sap and tears of the shoot. ...This that everywhere else isonly a perishable good / Here is only quietness and swift disengagement; / This thateverywhere else is a swaggering about / Here is only a rose and a footprint on thesand. ... Many things have been said, O Queen of Apostles / We have lost the tastefor speeches / We no longer have altars unless yours / We do not know anything otherthan a simple prayer”. Merry Christmas. q
653ODAYS - 5 - 2012
Detail of Our Lady of the Rosary, Caravaggio, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
CHRISTIANITY: A SIMPLE STORY
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