About 50,000 people will gather in St. Peter's Square this weekend to commemorate the 100th birthday of Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the international group, Communion and Liberation. He was an Italian theologian who is now in the process of beatification.
FR. ANDREA DAURIA
Director, Centro Internacional CL
The process is going well. It is a little complex because Fr Giussani wrote so much. He was a raging river, a volcano of ideas and teaching, and so we know that the relevant Dicastery has to look at everything Fr. Giussani wrote and said to be sure that his doctrine is sound.
Fr. Andrea Dauria is the director of the International Center of Communion and Liberation. As a young man, he knew Father Giussani and still remembers the passion with which he presented the faith.
FR. ANDREA DAURIA
Director, Centro Internacional CL
He had the courage to speak to modernity. He was not afraid to confront modern thought.
What, in the past, may have been, in the Church, a proclamation that many might have felt colorless, unpersuasive or unattractive, Fr. Giussani was able to re-propose it in a very persuasive and attractive way.
On October 15, friends and followers of Communion and Liberation will commemorate this very special day with an audience with Pope Francis. Fr. Dauria recalls that another pope spoke fondly of the group's founder.
FR. ANDREA DAURIA
Director, Centro Internacional CL
It is true that Fr. Giussani, as Pope John Paul II once said, brought the sacredness of Christianity out—he brought it into the world.
Pope John Paul II also said that Fr. Giussani was able to free Italian Catholics from an inferiority complex.
Fr. Giussani was an Italian theologian and founder who planted the seed for a new way of living and spreading the Gospel that today can be found in 90 countries on five continents.
AO
TR: KG
