A clear and Franco portrait, which illuminates hidden sections. Those who know him know that Don Luigi Ciotti is a generous man: in fact, as his life shows, but also of words. It is not denied the story. But to Toni Mira, author of for the San Paolo types of I wish you to be hereticsDon Luigi Ciotti, a life on the way, granted himself more than usual: it will have been 80 years old, turned on September 10, 2025, which as “in transit” are time for budgets -hence the reversed wish for the title -; The right questions will have beento him and the people who have dealt with him, but here Don Luigi Ciotti “comes out”.
Faith comes out, pragmatic, distant sidereal distances from what Don Primo Mazzolari would have defined spiritualism disenchanted: it is understood that, as was for David Maria Turoldo with whom Colti tells the meeting, for him to unite heaven and earth means not only not to look away from the world in which you livebut it also means knowing its distortions in a non -superficial way: When he talks about drugs, of mafia, corruption Don Ciotti talks about it as a strongly documented person.
He knows very well that to do the good, without doing damage, it is necessary not to improvise. But he also knows that the generosity is not naive, it does not imply the look of the gaze, proof is the intense testimony of the meeting with high head and the right look, with Ninetta Bagarella, Toto Riina’s wife: not for nothing one of the recurring words of the book is “responsibility”. Indeed co -responsibility. The Don Ciotti that emerges from these pages, which then who knows him know how to be the authentic Don Ciotti, is a man and priest who gives everyone a second chance, but not free, not without going through the consciousness of the evil made.
Tells and tells the Don Ciotti of these pages, but as always he does not send them to say, The use of the word “heretics”, which does not mean heterodox, passes through the need to “be” uncomfortable for others, including power, and for “being uncomfortable” when the testimony requires it: The contrasts come out, the misunderstandings with his church and, sometimes, with the civil authorities, who at a certain point, in the role of the excess of an official’s zeal, come to doubt that priest who passes the nights with the toxic to make him risk the arrest for a sensational misunderstanding. (With regard to the meaning of the word “heretics” and at the origin of the title, please refer to the book, because it is one of the most intense pages).
The intimate, personal, family side also comes out, including love for the mountains of Cadore in which he was born and where he in the end he asked to return.
But it is from the testimonies of others, from Margherita Asta, the girl who has been an orphan of mom in the Pizzolungo massacre, accompanied to the altar as a daughter, in Nando Dalla Chiesa, who The side of Ciotti comes out that always displaces him when he meets him: the immense evangelical ability that he has to love his neighbor in an amazing relationship one as one as if Ciotti was not alone and if his neighbor was not in over 50 years of priesthood on the road an infinite number of people, to each of which to give something exclusive. Yet those who met him even a few times know: Don Luigi Ciotti has a prodigious memory and attention and memory for each, in spite of a very dense agenda. And when he says it is impossible for him to stop and spare himself because they are the needs of others to dictate the agenda, you have to believe him because it is really that way.
Among the many, the testimony of Monsignor Galantino, who claims to have placed Don Luigi Ciotti, before knowing him, on the shelf of the personal library, among the “irregular”, authentic Christians, from which to let himself be questioned conscience, is very beautiful.
