CHILDEN PRAYING FOR PEACE

 

 

 

October is considered the month of the ROSARY, with, Oct. 7 being  the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary, the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has announced the 20th edition of its One Million Children Praying the Rosary campaign, whose purpose this year is to pray “for peace and unity in a world wounded by division, conflict, and suffering.”

On Oct. 18, 2005, a group of laypeople organized children and young people to pray the rosary in the city squares of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, while that nation was under the control of authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez (whose successor, Nicolas Maduro, has only intensified repression). Several women who were present while a group of children were praying the rosary were inspired by a quote popularly attributed to St. Pio of Pietrelcina  (feast day Sept.23) : “When one million children pray the rosary, the world will change.”

The campaign has grown into a significant spiritual movement, drawing participation from schools, parishes, and families across the world.

Participants can register on the campaign website. ACN encouraged groups to complete the registration process so they can “get an idea of ​​how many children are officially participating in the event.” Additionally, several useful resources in 15 different languages ​​can be downloaded from the site.

ONE OF THE GOOD ONES

 

Today, few politicians have a reputation for ethics far less holiness, but after WWII, there cropped up men who would have a lasting effect on their country. We have seen Venerable Robert Schuman (French), the Italians, Servant of God Alcide DeGaspari, the foe of fascism,  Servant of God Father Luigi Sturzo, the priest politician, and Venerable Giorgio La Pira, the lay Dominican.

SERVANT OF GOD ALDO ROMEO MORO was born in  1916. He rose to be a prominent statesman and politician as a member of the Christian Democrat Party, eventually becoming the 38^th Prime Minister of Italy from 1963 to 1968 and again from 1974 to 1976.

Known as one of Italy’s longest serving Prime Misters in modern times, Aldo Moro is also considered the Father of the Italian “left of center” politics and a very popular leader in the Italian Republican history. An intellectual by temperament and education, he was known as a mediator, especially within his own political party as well as with the Italian Communist Party of his time.

Aldo Moro implemented a series of social and economic reforms that modernized the country. Due to his accommodation with the Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, known as the Historic Compromise, Moro is widely considered to be one of the most prominent fathers of the modern Italian center-left.

 On March 16, 1978 Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the radical “Red Brigade” and killed after fifty-five days of captivity, on May 9^th.. His body was found in a parked red car on a street in the center of Rome, not far from the church of Gesu, also near the headquarters of both the Christian Democratic Party and the Italian Communist Party. 

He was born near Lecce in the Apulia region (southeast) of Italy. He studied law at the University of Bari, where he later taught philosophy of Law, colonial policy and criminal Law. At the age of twenty, in 1935, he joined the Catholic University Students’ Association in Bari. (Photo: with his brother Alberto, on left, who died in 1944)

Four years later, with the approval of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montoni, who later became Pope (St.) Paul VI, Aldo Moro was chosen as president of the Catholic University’s Students’ association, a post he kept until 1942, when he was succeeded by Guilio Andreotti, another important Italian politician.

Initially interested in social democratic policies, eventually Aldo Moro’s Catholic faith and convictions directed him toward the newly founded Christian Democrat Party. There he befriended Guiseppe Dossetti, another prominent politician who in later life was founder of a Catholic religious community near Bologna.

In 1942 Aldo Moro married Eleonara Chiavarelli, when they were both about 36 years old. They had four children, three girls and one boy. 

Aldo Moro was also an active part of Catholic Action, which was a strong lay movement in Italian Catholic culture and the seedbed for many religious and priestly vocations.

Eventually Aldo Moro became vice-president of the Christian Democrats and took part in an editing of the Italian Constitution. In 1948 he was elected to the Italian Parliament and remained active in politics until his death. During his first term as Prime Minister of Italy beginning in 1963, his political career promoted housing for the poorer sectors of society as well as education initiatives for students of all ages.

 The minimum wage was raised during his time as Prime Minister and pensions for seniors were promoted. Health care was also a concern of his. He was considered a tenacious leader and mediator between varying political parties of the day. He also worked to integrate young people, women and laborers into ordinary Italian life. The need for democracy was a constant theme in his political approach.

When in 1978 the militant far-left organization known as the “Red Brigade” abducted Aldo Moro off a street in Rome, he was not immediately harmed, but police and bodyguards accompanying him, five in number, were murdered by his abductors.

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At the time he was kidnapped Aldo Moro was heading to parliament for a crucial vote on a ground-breaking alliance he had proposed between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communists. Both parties had strong objections, even abhorrence, about the alliance. Both Moscow and Washington, DC, were also apparently unhappy about the proposal. 

A general strike was carried out in Italy during the Prime Minister’s abduction in 1978 and searches for him took place in Rome, Milan and Turin. During the almost two months of his captivity, he was allowed to correspond some with family and friends. Attempts were made to have him released but his kidnappers would not move.  Even Pope Paul VI, who had known Aldo Moro for decades, offered himself in exchange for Aldo.

The Red Brigade had a private trial and Aldo Moro was found guilty and sentenced to death. The kidnappers sent out demands that unless sixteen Red Brigade members were released from prison, he would be killed. Terrorist demands were not met and Aldo Moro was ultimately shot ten times, then left in the trunk of a red Renault  that was parked on Via Michaelangelo Caetani on May 9, 1978. The place seemed carefully selected, as midway between the headquarters of the Italian Communists and the Christian Democrats.

Though largely forgotten today outside Italy, the kidnapping and death of Aldo Moro marked an important turning point in contemporary Catholic history, one whose consequences are still being felt. For the Catholic church, the fallout from the Moro affair was immense. Combined with Italy’s adoption of a liberal abortion law in early 1978, the Moro affair helped to seal a growing alienation between the church and the secular left – forces that in the years immediately after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had seemed to be moving towards detente.

While Aldo Moro is not presently being considered for canonization as our past politicians of the same era, he certainly was “one of the good ones”.

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ANOTHER HOLY REFORMER IN 20th CENTURY

 

"The saints are the permanent catechesis given to us by God over the course of history: The saints, in fact, are the ever-new translation of the Word of God into human life; in the saints, the Word becomes life, flesh, and blood…"                                                                                                    Pope Benedict XVI

One saint to be, certainly had a place in shaping the history of modern Europe, conscious of the place of Christ in the life of the world.

SERVANT OF GOD FATHER LUIGI STURZO was an Italian Catholic priest and prominent politician. He was known in his lifetime as a former Christian socialist turned popuarist, and is considered one of the fathers of the Christian democratic platform. In 1951, hee was also the founder of the Luigi Sturzo Institute, designed to endorse research in historical science, as well as in economics and politics. He was one of the founders of the Italian People's Party in 1919 but was forced into exile in 1924 with the rise of Italian fascism. In exile in London and later New York City, he published over 400 articles (published after his death under the title Miscellanea Londinese) critical of fascism. 

He would be  replaced as leader of the Popular Party by Servant of God Alcide De Gasperi  (see previous Blog) who was to change its name to the Christian Democratic Party.

Father Sturzo was born  in 1871 in Caltagirone, Sicily  and had a twin sister, Emanuela (also known as Nelina). His two brothers Luigi and Franco Sturzo were well-known Jesuits. His elder brother Mario Sturzo was a noted theologian and Bishop of Piazza Armerina.

 His two other sisters were Margherita and Remigia who became a nun (Sister Giuseppina). He began his studies for the priesthood in 1888 and was ordained in 1894. Following his graduation, Father Sturzo served as a teacher of philosophical and theological studies in Caltagirone. In 1898, he received a doctorate in his philosophical studies from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He served as his town's Vice-Mayor from 1905 to 1920. 

Father Luigi Sturzo is one of the great thinkers in the history of the Church. He was concerned to reform society, not in an authoritarian way but through a genuine democratic spirit. He saw the presence of polarities in the Church and in society, and he was not desirous of eliminating them. 

He saw these polarities as creative in the growing rationalization of social living. At the same time he did his reforming work under the inspiration of Catholic social principles. These principles were seen not as an ideology but as a wisdom, based on the concrete historical knowledge of an integral sociology, as he Sturzo began his reforming work under the influence of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum.

Father Sturzo became the target of a vulgar Fascist press campaign of vilification and once Mussolini started threatening reprisals against the whole clergy for the political opposition of Father Sturzo's party, he resigned as the party leader on 10 July 1923, following a consultation with the Holy See.

Father Sturzo himself leaned towards resignation, aware that his position in the party was vulnerable, as a priest, he was forbidden from sitting in the parliament, and his political power was limited because of his priesthood.

 It was, therefore, arranged that a secular Catholic, Servant of God Alcide De Gasperi, take over the leadership of the party. Father Sturzo remained active in the party until 1924 when Cardinal Gasparri himself arranged for his emigration to London after fascist pressures and physical threats against the priest escalated further.

Father  Sturzo was exiled from 1924 to 1946 first in London (1924–1940) and then in the United States (1940–1946). How painful it must have been for this reformer to sit back and watch the mess in his home country and much of Europe. 

Beginning in 1941, he cooperated with agents from the British Security Co-Ordination, as well as the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information, providing them with his assessments of the political forces with the Italian resistance movement and radio broadcasts to the Italian peninsula. 

Father Sturzo returned to Italy in1946 but did not have a dominant role in Italian politics. He instead retired to the outskirts of Rome and was made a member of the Senate of the Republic  in 1952 and senator for life in 1953 at the behest of the then Italian president Luigi Einaudi and he obtained a dispensation from Pope Pius XII in order to accept the title.

On 23 July 1959, Father Sturzo celebrated Mass. When he came to the consecration of the Eucharist, he looked down and slumped. He was carried to his bed still in his vestments with his health taking a sharp decline until his death August 8, 1959. His remains were interred in the church of San Lorenzo al Verano but were transferred in 1962 to the church of Santissimo Salvatore in Caltagirone.

The beatification process for Father Sturzo opened under Pope  (St.) John Paul II in 2002. 

Photo bottom right is celebration of his 80th birthday

Top art: Colored litography on paper by Janos Hajnal (Budapest, 1913 - Rome, 2010) "The Constituent Fathers of the Christian Democrats: Don Luigi Sturzo, Alcide De Gasperi, Leo Valiani, 1976

CONTEMPLATING THE GOOD LIFE!

 

                                      

                                          ZARAH  ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT

THE FATHER OF EUROPE

 

Catholic veneration of the saints is rooted in this loving reverence we accord to those who have allowed themselves to be transformed by Christ’s love. The saints are the embodiments of grace triumphing over the forces of mediocrity and evil within the spirit of man. They show the possibility of holiness, becoming models to imitate in our own lives, and inspirations to light up the darkness which surrounds us all. When we study their lives, we take courage in the knowledge that other human beings succeeded in loving even though they had to face external difficulties and internal obstacles similar to our own.                    Ronda Chervin                                                                                                                                                           

Since I have missed almost a month doing this Blog, I want to consider holy people who made a difference in the world order, during their lifetime. The first of these, and perhaps the most well known, more for his politics than his holiness is, SERVANT of GOD ALCIDE DE GASPERI. 

After the Second World War Alcide De Gasperi was one of the promoters of the project for a united Europe along with the former French minister of foreign affairs, Robert Schuman, (already declared venerable by Pope Francis- see Blog 5/18/21), and the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. They were inspired by the values ​​of Christian humanism. Alcide De Gaspari was a man who acted in the interests of the patria, not for self-serving reasons, or from personal egoism. 

 Alcide De Gasperi was born in Pieve Tesino in Tyrol, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary, now part of the province of Trento in Italy. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. From his adolescence Alcide was active in the Social Christian Movement. At 19, he joined the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, where he played an important role in the foundation of the Christian student movement.

 After his degree in Philology, he started to work as a journalist and politician. In 1911 he became a congressman for the Popular Political Union of Trentino in the Austrian Parliament, a post he held for six years. When his home region was transferred to Italy in the post-war settlement, he accepted Italian citizenship. He however never tried to hide his love for Austria and the German culture and often preferred speaking German to his family, many of whom spoke German as their first language.

 
In 1919, he was among one of the founders of the Italian People’s Party. He served as a deputy in the Italian Parliament from 1921 to 1924, a period marked by the rise of Fascism. As Mussolini’s hold on the Italian government grew stronger, he soon diverged with the Fascists. In November 1926, in a climate of overt violence and intimidation by the Fascists, the People’s Party was dissolved.

 Alcide De Gasperi married Francesca in 1922, after a courtship during which he wrote very passionate love letters. They had four daughters. The eldest, Maria Romana, is his biographer.  (Photo with wife)

Alcide De Gasperi was arrested in March 1927 and sentenced to four years in prison. The Vatican negotiated his release. A year and a half in prison nearly broke his health. After his release in July 1928, he was unemployed and in serious financial hardship, until in 1929 his ecclesiastical contacts secured him a job as a cataloguer in the Vatican Library, where he spent the next fourteen years until the collapse of Fascism in July 1943.

During the reconstruction years, De Gasperi was the undisputed head of the Christian Democrats, the party that dominated Parliament for decades. From 1945 to 1953, he was the prime minister of eight successive Christian Democratic governments.

 Although he could have formed an exclusively Christian Democratic government, he instead formed a “centrist” coalition with Liberals, Republicans and Social Democrats. “De Gasperi’s policy is patience,” according to the foreign news correspondent for the New York Times, Anne McCormick. “He seems to be feeling his way among the explosive problems he has to deal with, but perhaps this wary mine-detecting method is the stabilizing force that holds the country in balance.”

In domestic policy, a number of social security reforms were carried out by various ministers of De Gasperi’s cabinets in the areas of rents and social housing, health and unemployment, insurance and pensions. He directed the Italian economic boom to the advantage of the many and contributed to create Italy’s successful welfare state.

 The Holy See actively supported Christian Democracy, declaring that it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic to vote for the Communist Party and excommunicating all its supporters. In practice, however, many Communists remained religious. 

In August 1953, the seventh government led by De Gasperi was forced to resign by Parliament. He consequently retired from active politics and gave his last year to the European cause.

Alcide De Gasperi used to speak of “Our homeland Europe”. He wrote: “At the origin of our European civilization, as stated by Toynbee, there is Christianity. I only want to mention our common heritage, that moral vision which enhances the responsibility of the human person, with its ferment of Christian fraternity, with its cult for beauty inherited from our forefathers, with its will for justice sharpened by the experience of two thousand years.”

Alcide De Gasperi certainly  knew how to embody the Christian faith into the complex socio-political realities of his time. He was passionately fond of the Church’s Social Doctrine with its ideals of putting into society the salt and yeast of the Bible’s integral humanism and the centrality of the human person so that the “City of Man” might be the vanguard of the “City of God”.

Politics was for him the highest form of charity in as much as it was the translation of the parable of the Good Samaritan in institutionalized reforms that respond to the needs of the poorest.  For Alcide De Gasperi politics and spirituality were inextricably intertwined so that the former was offering reasons to the latter.

 He wrote: “The first commandment of God in the Bible is a social and cultural commandment: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it’ (Genesis 1:26). Conquer the earth with progress, work, arts and sciences. Do not close yourselves in your individual microcosm, says the Creator, but live a social life and dedicate your energies to the earth and the community of men. God has entrusted the world with all its riches to human beings, to their disputes, their efforts for progress, and their search for goodness and truth.”

 On August 19, 1954, he died in Sella di Valsugana, in Trentino. It is said that he had to be given a State funeral as he had died with almost no means of his own. He is buried in the basilica of San Lorenzo, in Rome.

 Conrad Adenauer wrote: “After the war, it was a true blessing for Italy to have entrusted the politics of the country to such a valid person as Alcide De Gasperi. My many encounters with him remain in my memory for the moral and spiritual seriousness of a man to whom I am still very grateful. He has been not only a great Italian but a European of high conscience and as such he will enter world history.”  

(Photos:  with Winston Churchhill, Konrad Adenauer, and daughter Maria Romana)

NEW SAINTS FOR THE WORLD

In honor of  today's canonization of  Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, The Vatican City State,  the Republic of San Marino, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta announced they have issued stamps to commemorate this wonderous occasion. 

St. Pier Giorgio  was known for his social commitment, his charity toward others, and his joyful spirituality,  while St. Carlos used his innovative knowledge of technology as a means of  spreading the gospel.

St. Pier Giorgio's feast will be July 4 and St. Carlos is set for  October 12.

May these two young saints encourage the youth of this generation towards a hope in a sometimes hopeless world. May they be a light which leads to a love of Jesus, especially in the Eucharistic. And may they show the world that holiness can be won by anyone.

"The new saints “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces,” Pope Leo said at the conclusion of his homily. “They encourage us with their words: ‘Not I, but God,’ as Carlo used to say. And Pier Giorgio: ‘If you have God at the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end.’ This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness. It is also the type of witness we are called to follow, in order to enjoy life to the full and meet the Lord in the feast of heaven.”