Father Luigi Monza
“Who are the most fragile today? This is the question that continues to urge us: Don Monza teaches us to look at contemporaneity with the eyes of the last: they are the ones who must be put at the center, in their potential.” Michela Boffi, consecrated of the Secular Institute Piccole Apostole della Carità, is the vice-postulator of the cause of canonization of Don Luigi Monza. The Ambrosian priest already proclaimed blessed in 2006, whose death marks 70 years on September 29, he was a tireless witness to the “practical charity of the first Christian communities”, always placing the fragilities of his time at the center of his life: the poor, the sick, the disabled and above all children, the displaced (to whom he made his own home available during the Second World War), the partisans, the parishioners at the front and then also the fascists who risked lynching after the fall of the regime. “And to think that during fascism he had also been imprisoned for four months… Don Monza did not pass judgment but always offered his practical charity. Today his message of love must be brought up to date in the contexts in which we live, listening to the needs of our time”, says the vice-postulator.
For Don Monza, holiness was not a “picture affair”, a reality for the few. «Quite the opposite, it was living the ordinary in an extraordinary way, putting charity into practice every day». More than a man of action, Don Monza was first and foremost a man of profound spirituality. Boffi also says: «He had an absolute love for God, he prayed especially to the Eucharist. And thanks to prayer he was able to activate in himself and in others the call to practical charity.”
A testimony that has borne much fruit, if we consider that the “great family of Blessed Luigi Monza”, the set of spirituality groups and experiences of service, an expression of the same spirituality, today includes the Secular Institute of the Little Apostles of Charity, the Little Apostles of Charity, the Association Our Family, the Group of Friends of Our Family of Don Luigi Monza, the Zarepta Widow Group, the Youth Vocational Ministry, Our Family a family of families, the Orizzonti Sereni FONOS Foundation, and the Volunteer Organization for International Cooperation OVCI – Our Family ETS, Blessed Luigi Monza Study Center. «Don Luigi also greatly valued the presence of women in the Church, grasping the potential of many young women and recognizing their human, practical and spiritual abilities»Boffi notes again. «In the post-war period, when women were mostly dedicated to home and family, she proposed to young women the consecration in the world, taking care of Nostra Famiglia (still active today in Ponte Lambro as well as with rehabilitation centers abroad, ed.) of the reception and rehabilitation of children with disabilities. Today we would say that he recognized her empowerment, he certainly knew how to recognize the feminine genius”.
To remember the priest, a round table is scheduled in Lecco on September 28th Blessed Don Luigi Monza between memory and future. Human fragility and women in the Church in the prophetic vision of the Blessed, with the participation – among others – of Monsignor Frank Giulio Brambillabishop of Novara and former vice-president of the CEI, Silvia Landra, head of Catholic Action Lombardy and Michela Boffi. Moderated by journalist Gerolamo Fazzini (Auditorium Casa dell’Economia in via Tonale 28/30, from 3 pm to 5:30 pm, registration on www.luigimonza.it).