Courageous and persecuted Pope
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This year is the centenary of
election of Pius XI. His pontificate took place between two world wars. He was a true pastor for the Church. He knew it well
and helped the works of Don Guanella.
by Lorenzo Bianchi
Achille Ratti, born in Desio (Milan) on 31 May 1857 and son of the director of the local spinning mill, after having attended the Lombard Seminary in Rome, was ordained a priest in 1879 (he was twenty-two and a half years old).
«He truly loved the Lord»
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Interview with Pia Luciani,
nephew of John Paul I
by Francesco Marruncheddu
CHow did you, as a family, receive the news of the beatification of your uncle, Albino Luciani, by Pope John Paul I?
We always knew that it would come, that sooner or later it would happen. We welcomed her with joy and also with a lot of normality. We thank the Lord for this gift: not everyone is given to have a blessed uncle! I know families who have a saint among their relatives, but it's not something usual or something you get used to... . For us he was equally "blessed" before, we already considered him a saint, but now it is the Church that officially recognizes him. But it was worth taking it out of the darkness and placing it like a candle on the candlestick…
The Lord loved his humility so much
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The beatification of Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, which will be celebrated
next September 4th, proposes once again the mysteriously short days of a pontificate entirely dedicated to the essentials.
by Lucio Brunelli
To read his name solemnly inscribed among the blessed of the Catholic Church, Albino Luciani would blush. Like the time when Paul VI took off his papal stole in Venice and placed it on his shoulders as a sign of esteem. «I had never turned so red in my life», he confided in his first Angelus after the papal election. People felt that thehumbled in the new pope it was not a pose.