The members of the Communion and Liberation movement are advised by the Pope to foster unity and love for the Church, since allowing fraternity to be wounded by divisions is playing the game of the devil, this Saturday.
“Always love the Church. Love and preserve the unity of your ‘communion’. Do not let your fraternity be wounded by divisions and oppositions, which play into the hands of the evil one,” the Pope said this Saturday to the members of Communion and Liberation who arrived at the Vatican to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of its founder, Fr. Luigi Giussani.
The Pontiff held this meeting in Saint Peter’s Square, where more than 50,000 members of this movement gathered, from some 60 countries.
Father Giussani, theologian and intellectual, was born on October 15, 1922 in Milan (Italy) and founded Communion and Liberation in 1954. The priest died in 2005 and his beatification cause was opened in 2012.
The meeting began with a greeting from the president of Communion and Liberation, Davide Prosperi, and the testimonies of two members of the movement.
Prosperi succeeded in November 2021 Fr. Julián Carrón, who resigned as president of Communion and Liberation following Vatican changes that established term limits for international associations of the faithful.
Carrón, 72, had served as president of this international movement since 2005, after the death of its founder.
In his address to him, Pope Francis acknowledged that the movement has been in a “not easy” transition period after the death of Fr. Giussani.
“We have to thank Fr. Julián Carrón for his service at the head of the movement during this period and for keeping the helm of communion with the pontificate firm,” the Holy Father said.
“However -he continued- there have been serious problems, divisions and certainly even impoverishment in the face of an ecclesial movement as important as Communion and Liberation, from which the Church and I expect more, much more.”
In September 2021, the Vatican appointed a special delegate to oversee Memores Domini, Communion and Liberation’s consecrated lay branch, following governance concerns.
“Times of crisis are times of recapitulation of his extraordinary history of charity, culture and mission; these are times of critical discernment of what has limited the fruitful potential of Don Giussani’s charism,” the Pope said.
“These are times of renewal and missionary relaunch in light of the current ecclesial moment, as well as the needs, sufferings and hopes of contemporary humanity”.
Likewise, the Pope affirmed that “even difficult times can be times of grace and rebirth”. “The crisis”, he underlined, “makes it grow. It should not be reduced to conflict, which undoes”.
The Holy Father also encouraged the movement to foster unity amid diversity and not waste time with “gossip, mistrust and opposition.”
Pope Francis also reflected on three aspects of the founder of the movement: his charisma, his vocation as an educator and his love for the Church.
He recalled the words of Benedict XVI – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – at Fr. Giussani’s funeral.
The current Pope Emeritus affirmed that the founder of Communion and Liberation “always kept his eyes on his life and his heart fixed on Christ. He thus understood that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a pack of dogmas, a moralism, but that Christianity is an encounter; a love story; It is an event.”
“You know well – Pope Francis pointed out – that the discovery of a charism always passes through the encounter with concrete people. These people are witnesses that allow us to approach a greater reality, which is the Christian community, the Church”.
“It is in the Church that the encounter with Christ remains alive. The Church is the place where all charisms are kept, nurtured and deepened,” he said. “We are all called to this: to be mediators for others of the encounter with Christ, and then let them go their own way, without linking them to us.”