In memory of Don Mario Carrera
by Don Bruno Capparoni
MTuesday, March 11, 2025, the Lord called Don Mario Carrera to himself, who had been a patient for a year and a half in the Guanellian House of San Gaetano in Caidate (Varese); the following Thursday his funeral was celebrated in the parish church of Canegrate (Milan) and his body was placed in the family tomb in the local cemetery, next to his parents and his beloved sister. Thus his earthly journey ended and the fulfillment of the “blessed hope” began for him. We are left with his memory, rich in testimony.
On May 25th, Don Mario would have turned ninety, having spent almost all of his time in the Opera Don Guanella, starting from the distant 1954. A good part of these ninety years (from 2005 to 2022) were spent for the Pious Union of the Transit of Saint Joseph and for the direction of the monthly magazine The Holy Crusade in honor of Saint Joseph. In May we will dedicate a larger space in the monthly magazine to remember his industrious presence among us, but from now on we want to share with the readers some grateful considerations.
Don Mario Carrera was, in the Opera Don Guanella, the person in charge of the media and he progressively highlighted his skills as a passionate communicator; although he was self-taught, he put all his passion into tackling this demanding task. When he was parish priest in Florence, in the Guanellian parish of Corpus Domini, Archbishop Giovanni Benelli noticed his abilities and asked him to start the weekly magazine of the Tuscan dioceses Tuscany today, which began in 1983. After a decade, the superiors of the Opera Don Guanella asked him to take care of the Guanellian "communication" and to give a more dignified appearance to the magazine To serve, periodical of the Opera in Italy. Finally, on May 1, 2005 he was appointed director of the Pious Union of the Transit of St. Joseph and of the monthly The Holy Crusade.
Here he capitalized on a wealth of experience and acquired professional relationships and consolidated the monthly magazine, making it a dignified voice of devotion to Saint Joseph and the Pious Union. His passion for substantial communication led him to involve qualified collaborators, to honor the subtitle of "cultural monthly" that he wanted to give to The Holy Crusade. He added to this the warmth of affection in his articles and reports, a characteristic that struck his readers and interlocutors. He knew and wanted to be close to everyone, to simple people as well as to cultured and important ones, with the same attentive cordiality. He communicated from the abundance of the heart what he lived by, a firm faith and a dynamic charity.
In his last months he found himself in the difficult situation of “communicating” more with patience than with the pen or words. He faced the burden of old age, illness, disability and practiced “the art of discomfort, illness and solitude,” which he wrote about in his first editorial on The Holy Crusade of July 2005. In his last days he “communicated”, within the fatigue of a life that is fading, his acceptance of the common mortal inheritance, proper to us men, but he remained firm in the light of faith and in the sweet company of Saint Joseph, of whom he spoke and wrote so much. To God, Don Mario.