I was born in Trentino and grew up in a valley not far from the capital city. In the summer between middle school and high school, I participated with my family on a vacation in the mountains with the Communion and Liberation community in the region. On the first trip I decided to go and meet some of the young guys in the community. I took my sandwich and approached a small group of three who were waiting for the others to arrive and start eating. I stayed with them all day, and over the next few days I continually looked for them. I was as if glued. I was attracted by the simple and beautiful friendship that united them and the enthusiasm with which they lived everything: the singing, the games, the walks, the meetings. From September I began to attend GS in Trent. The high school years were beautiful, even if they were marked by difficulties and hardships proper to that age: the things I discovered with these friends relaunched me back in life. We asked each other why we did everything, we wanted to experience school with enthusiasm and judgment, we spent a lot of time together preparing trips, games, vacations.
In August 2012, with some GS boys (including my cousin Gabriele, who is also now a priest of the Fraternity of Saint Charles), I took part in a pilgrimage to Poland: ten days of walking to get to the Marian shrine in Czestochowa. Those days gave me a clear perception that God had a good plan for me and was calling me to discover it. Soon after, I would start university in Bologna: I was beginning to meet new friends, I was falling in love with a girl, everything told me that life is a great promise of good.
Those days gave me a clear perception that God had a good plan for me and was calling me to discover it
After the beautiful experience of GS, it was natural for me to continue it by inserting myself in the community of the university students of CL. In Bologna, I began to experience that faith is expressed in the life of a people, made up of sharing, moments lived together, charity and dialogue about everything. In two words, of communion and friendship. As time went on, I also began to spend myself for the life of this community, sharing the responsibility of those who led it. By the end of the second year, I was doing many things and yet I was not happy, I felt that something was missing. I was also torn between an affective relationship that demanded a lot and the life of dedication to the community that I had begun to live.
At that point, something happened that shocked all of us: a friend from my time in GS, one of those I had met on the first trip, left everything to join the monastery. The night before she left, we held a party to say goodbye to her. That night I was completely fascinated by her radical choice, and even more so by her happy face. On the way home, I was surprised by this thought, “I, too, would like to belong totally to Christ, as she does.” Over the following months, the desire to give my whole life to God slowly won me over, until I decided to talk to Fr. Marco Ruffini, a priest of the St. Charles. It began a beautiful journey of verifying the vocation to virginity, first, and then to the priesthood. The desire to give my whole life to Christ had been born in the simple life of the community in which I lived, closely linked to the desire to serve the Church and the Movement. By meeting Fr. Marco, I had been able to get to know the Fraternity of Saint Charles better: thus my desire for dedication to God was immediately directed toward that house. One day, I went to see my cousin Gabriele, who had already entered the seminary. The few days that I spent in the house of Via Boccea convinced me that theirs was the company of men with which I desired to live: an experience of communion and friendship, whose goal is to serve the glory of Christ in the world.
