Anniversary of the death of the venerable Aurelio Bacciarini, bishop of Lugano

by Graziella Fons

Many times we forget that what makes us similar to God is the ability to love.

This love constantly expands according to the gaze of God and the more this gaze is concentrated on the talents received, in the same way we ourselves radiate the same divine light.

For this reason it was written that "a saint is a visible, palpable face of evangelical perfection", for this reason Saint Francis de Sales underlined the difference between a page of music and hearing those same notes sung. "Between the book of the Gospels and the lives of the saints - wrote the holy Bishop - there is all the difference that exists between music written on a score and music sung".

Bacciarini, before becoming the director of the orchestra in governing a diocese, was a good disciple, he sang in the choir of the People of God and then he felt the charm of the vocation to the priesthood by leaving his Ticino valley and becoming a disciple of Jesus.

He wanted to follow him to help him save the world, especially alongside the derelict and wounded; he walked among the "rejects" of society and gave dignity to the poor by doing his utmost in every field to alleviate suffering and put a smile on the dull lips of many people.

Our Church is the Church of the saints. There is nothing great in the Church compared to holiness: from the pope's tiara to the bishop's pectoral cross, everything makes sense only in the light of this holiness, indeed "the whole great apparatus of wisdom, of strength, of docile discipline, of magnificence and majesty of the Church itself is nothing, in itself, if holiness does not animate it".

Christian holiness is the song of the concrete presence of Christ in the history of men, as the source of all divine energy. Having lost the nostalgia for holiness, which is God's will for love and communion ("this is the will of God - says the apostle Paul - that you sanctify yourselves"), we have become accustomed to dividing Christians between mystics - those who are with their heads in the clouds - and the builders of human justice, who are tempted to forget that the saint is he who, after having adored God, gets down on his knees before every man in difficulty who comes across his path.

Bacciarini constantly walked in the paths of the poor. As a teacher he taught and testified with his homilies in the bishop's chair of the cathedral of San Lorenzo in Lugano; he used his pen to convey the evangelical message with his pastoral letters to all the dioceses scattered in the Ticino valleys; but above all he was a shepherd, standing next to his flock; he traveled difficult paths in the valleys to personally visit the sick, providing for the material needs of the poor and confirming the confirmation candidates in the faith as well as keeping the Catholic associations alive and vibrant with faith.

There was a great desire to be together with the people, to listen to their words and as well as his commitment to granting a cordial word of participation in their aspirations.  During a winter season, in a mountain parish, so as not to leave all the parishioners without a good word, he gave about ten homilies: in church, at the cemetery, to children, to mothers and to various associations. Everyone had the right to a personal acquaintance with the father of their souls.

Even though he was in frail health, he did not spare himself in spreading the Word of God in every way and means.  Like every human creature, Bacciarini felt that he carried immense values ​​in his soul despite the fragility of a life undermined by a long illness. In a climate of latent weakening of human and Christian values, with the meandering of humanitarian currents, faced with the presence of Freemasonry, in 1926, to make the voice of the baptized people heard, he managed to found a newspaper, symbolically titled: «The People's newspaper". On that occasion he wrote to the young people of Catholic Action: «I don't know how much life I have left, but today I make a special will and I entrust to you young Catholics the conservation and diffusion of the Catholic newspaper [...] you must defend this institution and maintain it at the cost of any sacrifice."

Aurelio Bacciarini was declared "venerable" by Pope Benedict XVI. Of Bishop Bacciarini without fear of contradiction we can use a typical expression of Pope Francis and we can say that: for about twenty years Bishop Aurelio was a shepherd who shared "the smell of the sheep", but above all the experience of faith of his people by whom he was loved and venerated. Bacciarini, in the wake of the spirituality of Saint Therese of Lisieux, has always kept two essential needs united: the purity of his personal relationship with God with mystical heights of brotherhood with Christ and fatherhood with his people, spending himself unsparingly for the people that God had entrusted to him to accompany them on the path of salvation".

The sowing of the "good news" has produced its fruits, in fact, a few hours before leaving this earth, the Holy Spirit gave great consolation to Bishop Bacciarini: it was June 27, 1935 when, in the morning, he had signed the parchment with which tens of thousands of families of the diocese had consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was a dream that Bacciarini had cultivated for years both in building the basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart in Lugano as well as the consecration of families to the Heart of Jesus.

The body of Monsignor Bacciarini, awaiting the resurrection, is venerated in the crypt of the same Basilica of the Sacred Heart where the faithful pray to him awaiting a miracle obtained through his intercession so that the Church can canonize him and present him as a champion to imitate .