The Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo was founded on September 14, 1985 out of an intuition of Fr. Massimo Camisasca, who would be the superior general from its beginning until 2012. In the beginning, the Fraternity consisted of seven priests and ten seminarians. In the early 1980s, Camisasca and a small group of priests asked Cardinal Ugo Poletti if he could found a priestly association to form young men for mission and to respond to the mandate that John Paul II gave to Communion and Liberation in September of 1984 during an audience. “Go into all the world,” said the great Pope, “to bring the truth, the beauty, and the peace which are found in Christ the Redeemer.”
There are multiple reasons why the Fraternity, explicitly inspired by the person and charism of Fr. Luigi Giussani, is dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo. Camisasca, in the book “Il vento di Dio,”said that, beyond the awareness of “an affectionate protection from St. Charles” and the similarity between the great Milanese saint and Fr. Giussani (“the continuity of prayer, the untiring openness to mission, the boundless passion for Christ and people, and the concreteness of temperament”), there was from the beginning “the idea to contribute to the reform of the Church.” Reform, explains Camisasca, means something similar to what then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger defined as “a renewal that goes forward precisely because it teaches to live permanent values in a new way, keeping in mind the totality of the Christian fact and the totality of man.”
Along with the Fraternity, a seminary was established on via Liberiana, near the Basilica of St. Mary Major. The house of formation at that time was the seed of the form that the Fraternity would take, emphasizing the gestures that still characterize its educational method: “the liturgy, singing, study,” monthly house meetings, presence at the university, charitable work, and welcoming people who pass by Rome. In 1996, the Fraternity moved to Via Boccea where it remains today. In September 2003, it opened a Latin-American seminary in Mexico City. Today, the seminary is located in Santiago, Chile.
In 1989 the Fraternity was recognized as a Society of Apostolic Life of Diocesan right and the Fraternity began to spread both throughout Italy and around the world. Houses were built where three or more priests moved to live together, living the communion according to the spirit and rule of the mother house in Rome. “Since the beginning,” says Fr. Massimo, “the idea of mission was closely connected to the idea of the house.” There were a lot of requests to send priests alone throughout the world so that in theory needs could be met easily and more efficiently, but Fr. Massimo was opposed to this idea. “I was convinced by the experience of the Memores Domini that I saw grow and, more profoundly, the teaching of Giussani on communion as a guided companionship.” Pope John Paul II recognized the Fraternity as a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right on March 19, 1999.
On the 29th of September 2012, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI nominated Msgr. Massimo Camisasca as Bishop of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. On the 1st of February of the next year, the General Assembly of the Fraternity elected Fr. Paolo Sottopietra as the Superior General of the Fraternity of St. Charles.
