September marked your 50th year of priesthood. How did it all begin?
I come from a very Christian family: my mother was a homemaker, my father, a businessman and there were six siblings. After having encountered Gioventù Studentesca in Gallarate, at the vacations for those who were graduating 1966, there was a change. Fr. Luigi Giussani came to speak to us and I was blown away. If I had been naturally destined to take the place of my father in the family business, Giussani proposed a new gaze on life, and this made me ask where the Lord wanted me to go. This beautiful gaze took me over. And so, I began to think about the vocation.
I was a student of Economics and I was seeking a serious path to my vocation. Giussani introduced me to Massimo Camisasca and I became part of the group for vocational discernment that accompanied me all the way to my entrance in the seminary. My mother, when I told her my choice, was perplexed, but, with time, embraced my vocation, whereas my father was quite happy immediately.
As a seminarians you left for the first time on “mission.”
Yes, I was in Bergamo with Massimo Camisasca and Umberto Fantoni when Fr. Giussani proposed to me to go to Calabria. Another world with respect to Milan and the wars among students at the time. I discovered a human essentiality that was not just following an ideology.
I was still there when the day of my ordination arrived. There were Fr. Giussani, Massimo and the other friends from the seminary of Bergamo, Fr. Ciccio Ventorino and the community of Calabria.
Msgr. Enea Selis, the bishop who was celebrating, asked Fr. Giussani to speak of the priesthood and so Giussani began the homily saying, “It is for love of a father and a mother and for the charity of a bishop that today, Sandro becomes a priest.” It was the 26th of September, 1976. It was an amazing celebration!
In Calabria, the experience of the Movement grew as did the friendship with Fr. Tommaso Latronico (who died in 1993 at 44 years old and whose cause for beatification is open). A desire was born to add another priest.
In 1985 the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo was born.
I was particularly close with two priests who were among the first in the Fraternity, Fr. Fiorenzo and Fr. Dario who already lived with me. Fr. Massimo asked us if we were open to starting a house of the Fraternity in Calabria and if I wanted to enter to a part of it. For me, the Fraternity is the fruit of that which I lived with Massimo and Umberto in the seminary in Bergamo. An experience of unity, of home, that became flesh in my life when I entered the Fraternity in 1992. A few years later, I moved to Rome to become the General Treasurer.
Did you travel the world?
Yes! To sustain the missions. Without great economic resources, we were able to construct great works with donations, even some miraculous.
For example, in Nairobi. One morning I was about to go to Fr. Massimo to tell him that we had no money and so we could not continue to build our house of mission but they told me that there was a phone call from Romagna: a donation of the exact amount that we needed to complete the work. As the treasurer, I needed to measure things with calculation…but also with providence! This happened many times.
But even when I was stationed in Rome, as the pastor of Sant’Eusebio, I discovered the world that would come to my home: muslims, Chinese people. They were my parishioners, not strangers, even if they never set foot in the church.
Then in Imola a new chapter began?
I have been in Imola for four years now. At the threshold of 75 years of age, a desire was born in me, shared by my superiors, to remain active and, despite being at retirement age, to continue to live with other priests over 75. We opened a new house. Now, with Fr. Valerio Valeri, who after 36 years in Kenya desires to continue here, and Fr. Fiorenzo Onofrio, we are available to the bishop of the diocese to sustain or substitute other priests or to serve the life of the lively CL community here. I am realizing more and more that a Christian people needs a priest and a priest needs a people.
In these 50 years, you have lived out various dimensions of the priesthood.
After 50 years of priesthood, I see that I have a growing love for the Church, gratitude because the Lord called me to a task that was so close to Him. Gratitude for that which has been given to me, for what I have experienced and to gift of belonging to the Movement.
