SAINTLY POLITICIAN

These past BLOGs have been dedicated to holy lay people: doctors, an engineer and now a politician.  A politician?  How can anyone in politics be holy?  With God nothing is impossible.

Recently made venerable is  GIORGIO LA PIRA  who was known as  the “holy mayor” of Florence.

Giorgio was born  in 1904 in Pozzallo to a Sicilian packing-house worker the first of six children.  His Catholic upbringing and in particular the teachings of St Francis of Assisi had a vital role in shaping his political and philosophical beliefs. He saw all that he did and each position he took as an expression of his spiritual beliefs. In 1924 he experienced a profound religious calling that would forever set the pattern for his life. Giorgio became a Third Order Dominican in his early twenties.

 He studied accounting in Messina and  received a law degree from the Florence college in 1925. He became professor of Roman Law there in 1933 and his openness made him popular with the students.

As the mayor of Florence from 1951 to 1965, Giorgis’s influence extended well beyond his municipality. He made several official trips behind the Iron Curtain to Russia, China and Vietnam during the Cold War to promote peace and human rights. Before traveling to Moscow,  he visited Fatima and wrote to cloistered religious orders asking for their prayers for his journey.

At home in Italy, Giorgio advocated for the poor and for workers rights. He also contributed to the writing of the Italian Constitution after World War II.

His political perspectives were controversial in Italy, and some have criticized his openness to dialogue with communist parties and leaders.

However, he was  well-respected by religious leaders, even beyond Catholicism. In 1960, he began a friendship with Athenagoras I, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, who famously asked the mayor to bring an unprecedented gift of candy to Pope John XXIII, as a way to foster relations between the two churchmen. Four years later, Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI held a historic meeting in Jerusalem, which led to the rescinding of excommunications issued after the Great Schism in 1054.

He chose to live in simplicity in a cell in the monastery of San Marco in Florence until bronchitis forced him to move out.

After La Pira died in 1977, Pope Paul VI honored him in an Angelus address.

Pope Saint John Paul II spoke of the important role Giorgio La Pira played in the reconstruction of Europe, and chose to celebrate the “Jubilee of Governors” in 2000 on the date of  Giorgio’ s death, Nov. 5. 

 A quote from the former mayor of Florence was also selected as the motto for the celebration, “Our participation in a Holy Year is not an act of piety but a political act, because it must contribute to the realization of God’s plan in history.”