Luigi Giussani

Luigi Giovanni Giussani (15 October 1922 – 22 February 2005) was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation (Comunione e Liberazione).

Luigi Giussani was born on 15 October 1922 in Desio, near Milan, Italy. His father, Beniamino Giussani, was an artist and anarchist who instilled in him a love of beauty, particularly in poetry, painting and music, and a desire for justice. From his mother, Angelina Gelosa, he received his religiosity.

On 2 October 1933 he entered the diocesan seminary of Saint Peter Martyr Seveso at a young age, where he attended the first four years of school. There 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 (later Bishof of Piacenza) and Giacomo Biffi(who later became cardinal Archbishop of Bologna) Giussani founded a study group and newsletter under the name Studium Christi.

Giussani was ordained to the priesthood on 26 May 1945 at the young age of 23. His ordination had been accelerated by the authorities in the Milan archdiocese because they feared that the serious respiratory health problems he was experiencing at that time (and which would plague him his entire life) would lead to his death before becoming a priest. Following ordination 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 was driven by his desire to bring the Christian experience in the school environment in response to the questions and needs of young people living increasingly in a context that he perceived to be increasingly hostile to faith and the Catholic Church. Beginning in 1954, he taught at the Berchet Lyceum (classical high school) in Milan until 1967. 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 approach to the formation of young people. Both texts received the imprimatur of the severe ecclesial censor Msgr. Carlo Figini.

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