“My life has been full of a constellation of encounters that have given me so much, like wells of water in the desert and have helped me to make the journey.” Fr. Massimo Camisasca, founder of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo and bishop emeritus of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, recalls a few of them, the most meaningful and fruitful, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, in this interview to Fraternity and Mission. Personal memories that show gratitude and that intertwine with the pages of history, as well as with the existence of many persons who, in his turn, he has accompanied.
What are the encounters that made you into the man that you became?
Above all, my parents, the intermediaries of God from whom I received life, faith and freedom as a gift. When, at fourteen years of age, I met Fr. Giussani at Berchet high school, there was no competition; they were happy that this teacher left such a mark on my life. And my brother, who has always been a point of reference, of patient and faithful and mature companionship. Also decisive was Fr. Giussani, who opened me to life -I had been silent and had very few relationships- and to the infinite: not to a “Hegelian” infinite that equals nothing, but full of history, literature, art and philosophy, full of the concrete faces of Christ and of the friends from Gioventù Studentesca.
Decisive was Fr. Giussani, who opened me to life and to the infinite.
He was a multiplier of encounters, initiating in me a “thirst” for relationships, so much so that I too became capable of generating relationship. Between the fundamental encounters I remember my first collaborators of the Fraternity of St. Charles, Fr. Gianluca Attanasio and Fr. Paolo Sottopietra. And St. John Paul II, the person who, after my family and Fr. Giussani, had the most influence on my life.
What did John Paul II mean to you?
I met him thanks to Fr. Giussani, who in 1978 gave me the task of managing public relations between Communion and Liberation and the Holy See. Up until the first years of the Nineties, I was often close to him. I was struck by the exceptionality of a Pope who did not stop being a true man: poet, philosopher and athlete, free from posturing and fear, capable of humor and critical observation without becoming negative towards anyone. Perhaps, his excessive goodness was for him also a fount of suffering. Behind this humanity, however, there was a profound education to the faith, according to a Polish style and a mystical soul forged by the study of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. He was a man with an intense relationship with God and with Christ, lived without ostentation, with a crystal clear awareness of his own prophetic mission.
You also got to know many lay persons and celebrities. A few even became friends.
In 35 years in Rome and then in Reggio Emilia beginning in 2012, after my episcopal nomination, I encountered different worlds, beyond the religious and that of the Vatican: music, cinema, television, politics and sports. I could name an infinity of names but I think, in particular, to Antonello Venditti, to Pupi Avati and his daughter Maria Antonia, to the actress Piera Degli Esposti, to the ex-president of the Senate, Marcello Pera, to Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, ideator and voice of the Cccp and the Csi, to Iva Zanicchi, only woman to have won the Festival of Sanremo three times. But also to the journalist Aldo Cazzullo,who in the Roman years was a precious companion and to the writer Sussanna Tamaro. From each of these persons I have received something; it was not only I giving, but I was enriched in my turn. I have never found closed hearts: even for those who declared themselves non-believers, agnostic or atheist, in reality, were interested in a dialogue about what is human.
From each of these persons I have received something; it was not only I giving.
I was also the chaplain of AC Milan and I got to know champions such as van Basten and Baresi, recently deceased, Donadoni, Ancellotti, Maldini and, naturally, Arrigo Sacchi. Without forgetting Guiliano Razzoli, gold medalist in alpine skiing in Vancouver: as bishop I celebrated his wedding and baptized his children. And Sara Simeoni, for whom I blessed her marriage.
Does faith have something to say to today’s world?
To the world, I am not so sure; to persons, certainly. Faith tells us that we are not alone, that we do not come from nothing and we do not go towards nothing. That we come from a free and loving paternity and that we walk towards it. Life is made up of joys and sorrows, some events that become comprehensible and others that remain obscure, some that can leave us with wounds we carry to the end. The point is not that everything be clear but that in the fog there be a light, that the cold can be inhabited by a fire. And it is this that people are seeking. Fr. Giussani, reading “Il focolare” by Pascoli in class, shows us the difference between a hearth that is extinguished, an image of a life without meaning, and the light that is kindled by an encounter.
Do you often meet young people and families?
In this final phase of my life, which could last months or years, I am dedicating myself to listening to the questions of the young, to perceiving the beating heart of our time, and to whom I think I have something to transmit. Staying with young people is also a way to stay young. The families, then, are in the front lines: they carry on their shoulders the gravest responsibilities, such as faithfulness, fecundity and education. For this reason, they must be accompanied and sustained.
Is it true that the idea for the St. Charles came to you twenty years before the foundation?
In 1965, at the end of high school, I said to Fr. Giussani that I desired to become a priest but not diocesan: I was imagining a community of priests who could live together and who could be free to go anywhere. I was thinking not of a monastic form but one that is communal and missionary. That intuition -which was not realized right away, but remained in the incubator until 1985- was not only a sentiment; it was an idea nurtured by the study of history and of philosophy, of St. Benedict, St. Francis and St. Dominic, by the mediations of Fr. Giussani and of the first retreats of Memores Domini. From there came the suggestions for the house and for silence, of a common life that extended even to the sharing of goods.
The Fraternity has grown. What do you desire to leave to it as an inheritance?
A father lives two moments, generating and letting grow, desiring always that the growth might remain coherent to the origin. And what I desire for the Fraternity of St. Charles is that in it there always be safeguarded the conjoining of common life and mission. The Fraternity of St. Charles is not a monastic community; it does not take vows, according to the original idea of Fr. Giussani that I assumed. It must, therefore, conjoin that which I called “monastic bone structure” with the freedom for mission.
As long as God will allow me, I will continue to testify to the fecundity of this charism.
The life of the house, that is, is not closed in on itself but is at the service of mission. In this sense, I see a healthy and fruitful diversity with respect to the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles: the image of “one family in two institutes” seems to me to be a good definition. The Missionary Sisters, in fact, have a more defined contemplative dimension and a more stringent community rule, which is expressed also in vows. The joined life of these two missionary realities is a a gift from God: the one recalls the other to the freedom of mission and the other to the profundity of adoration.
You always gave your all for the Church and for the Movement. How have you lived this double entrustment?
I have never perceived it as a problem. For me, the life of the Movement was always the emergence of the life of the Church. I passed through many dramatic moments, it is true, above all in the Sixties and Seventies, when CL was not accepted by all and I was not even admitted to the seminary. I encountered aversions and even ill will. Naturally, I also saw the errors of certain persons in the Movement, which were due mostly to ingenuity and youth, but also to careerism. Every human activity, it should be noted, always brings a risk; but, as De Lubac wrote in the Mediation on the Church, if we wanted to eliminate every risk, we would eliminate every vocation. A charism can be lived well or poorly and all of us live them a bit well and a bit poorly: no one is the impeccable proprietor of their calling. But I have never had difficulty living the Church with the countenance of the Movement.
How can one be a pastor at your age?
Adhering to what God asks in the present. Every age brings with itself an offering and a question. Today, for me, it means, above all, praying for the needs of the Church and of the Movement. So as long as God will allow me, I will continue to testify to the fecundity of this charism through personal encounters and those with groups of Fraternity. I do not know up to what age He will allow me to do this. In the end, what will remain is what is essential: the offering of oneself.
