Monsignor Luigi Giussani (October 15, 1922-February 22, 2005), Italian Catholic priest, educator, public intellectual and founder of the international Catholic movement Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation).

Biography

Luigi Giussani was born in Desio, near Milan, Italy, to Beniamo and Angela Giussani. His father was an artist and anarcho-socialist who instilled in him a love of beauty, particularly in poetry, painting and music, and a desire for justice. From his mother he received his religiosity. Giussani entered the Milan diocesan seminary at a young age, where he discovered a way to understand "secular" works of art (such as the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven) as expressive of the religious sense and as unconscious prophecies of Christ's incarnation. With his fellow seminarians, including Enrico Manfredini (who later became Archbishop of Bologna) Giussani founded a study group and newsletter under the name Studium Christi.

Ordained a priest in 1945, Giussani began teaching at the Venegono Seminary. His academic interests were Eastern Christian Theology and American Protestantism. In the early 1950s he requested of his superiors to be allowed to leave seminary teaching to work in high schools. He taught at the Berchet Lyceum (classical high school) in Milan from 1954 to 1964. During this time his primary intellectual interest was the problem of education; his involvement with the religious instruction of the students at Berchet was instrumental in the rapid growth of Gioventú Studentesca (GS, Student Youth), at the time a student wing of Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action ). In the booklets Conquiste fondamentali per la vita e la presenza cristiana nel mondo (Fundamental Conquests for Christian Life and Presence in the World) (1954, co-authored with Fr. Costantino Oggioni) and L'esperienza (Experience)(1963), Giussani outlined the fundamental ideas behind his somewhat controversial approach to the formation of young people. Both texts received the imprimatur of the severe ecclesial censor Msgr. Carlo Figini.

In 1964 Giussani began teaching introductory theology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a position he occupied until 1990. In obedience to a request of his Archbishop, Giovanni Colombo , Giussani left Gioventú Studentesca in 1965 and devoted himself to theological studies. In the late 1960s Fr. Giussani was sent by his religious superiors on several periods of study in the U.S. and wrote Grandi linee della teologia protestante americana. Profilo storico dalle origini agli anni 50 (An Outline of American Protestant Theology. An Historic Profile from the Origins to the 50s).

In 1969 he returned to guide the former GS group, which had broken away from Azione Cattolica in the wake of the tumultuous student rebellions that swept Europe following the events of May 1968. Under the new name Communion and Liberation the movement Giussani founded attracted university students and adults in addition to high school students. Members of the movement, which Giussani led from 1969 until his death in 2005, became influential not only in the Church but also in politics and business. Young followers of Giussani who went on to become prominent public figures as adults include Angelo Cardinal Scola, Roberto Formigoni, and Rocco Buttiglione. In 1983 he was given the title of Monsignor by Pope John Paul II. Giussani outlined his views on politics in a famous address to an assembly of the Italian Christian Democratic party at Assago on February 6, 1987.

Giussani's writings have been translated in many different languages, attracting a worldwide following.

Works

Books translated into English

PerCorso Trilogy

• The Religious Sense, McGill-Queen's University Press (October 1, 1997). ISBN 0773516263.
• At the Origin of the Christian Claim, McGill-Queen's University Press (January 1, 1998).ISBN 0773516271.
• Why the Church?, McGill-Queen's University Press (October, 2000). ISBN 0773517073.

Other works translated into English

• Morality: Memory and Desire Ignatius Press (November 1, 1986) ISBN: 0898700906
• He Is If He Changes 30Days (1994) ASIN: B0006F5EU0
• Religious Awareness in Modern Man Communio 25, no. 1 (1998): 104-140.
• The Risk of Education Crossroad (August 15, 2001)

ISBN: 0824518993

• The Psalms Crossroad (June 2004) ISBN: 0824521242

Selected online texts

Essays, book excerpts

• "The Kingdom of Caesar and Action" (1954)
• "Experience" (1963)
• "Simon, Do You Love Me?" (1998)
• "The Five Reductions" (1998)
• "Moved By The Infinite" (2003)
• "Faith Is Given Us That We Communicate It" (2004)

Speeches and addresses

• "From Utopia to Presence" (1976)
• "Religious Sense, Works and Politics" (1986)
• "In the Simplicity of my Heart I have gladly given You everything" (1998)
• "The Five Reductions" (1998)
• "Woman, Do Not Weep!" (2002)

Interviews

• Excerpt from interview with Robi Ronza
• Interview with Angelo Scola
• Interview with Renato Farina

Books about Giussani

• A Generative Thought. An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani Edited by Elisa Buzzi (2004)

Quotes

• "For me, reason is openness to reality, a capacity to seize and affirm it in all its factors. For that other teacher, reason is the "measure" of all things, and a phenomenon becomes true only when it can be directly demonstrated." (The Religious Sense)

• "The method is imposed by the object!" (The Religious Sense)

• "Existence expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man's heart, and man's heart that begs for Christ." (Testimony before John Paul II, 1998)

• "I believe that unless the end of the world comes first, sixty or seventy years from now Christians and Jews can be one." (Interview, 2002)

• "[T.S. Eliot] asked himself "Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?" . . . Both, both, because first and foremost it is mankind who failed the Church, because if I need something, I chase after it, if it goes away. No one chased after it . . . The Church began to fail mankind, as I see it, as we see it, because she forgot who Christ was, she did not rely on..., she was ashamed of Christ, of saying who Christ is." (Interview, 2004)

• "The faith is not given us in order that we preserve it, but in order that we communicate it. If we don't have the passion to communicate it, we don't preserve it." (Written contribution to the XXI plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, 2004)

External links

• Italians mourn Catholic priest with far-reaching influence, Financial Times
• The "Right Way" of Fr. Luigi Giussani by Sandro Magister, L'Espresso
• Communion and Liberation official site