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The Pope will meet with the Communion and Liberation Movement
The audience in occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fraternity of CL. 70 thousand people await. Benedict XVI shows appreciation for all ecclesiastical movements.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – At least 70 to 80 thousand people of the Communion and Liberation Movement will be in Saint Peter’s Square on the 24th of March for an encounter with Benedict XVI. The pontiff granted an audience to the ecclesiastical group in occassion of the 25th anniversary of the papal recognition of the Fraternity of CL, which took place on the 11th of February 1982 with John Paul II. The gathering will begin at 11.00 and will conclude at 13.00.
This is the first time that the CL Movement, together with its leadership, is officially meeting with the Pope after the death of its founder don Luigi Giussani on 22 February 2005. As a cardinal, Pope Ratzinger never camouflaged his esteem for don Giussani and his movement. And he himself, as papal legate, presided the liturgy for the funeral of the founder, defined by him as a “beloved friend". Before thousands of people in Milan’s Duomo (Cathedral), the then Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke of don Giussani as a man of “imperturbable faith,” who had “earned many hearts to Christ” not testifying Christianity as a “package of dogmas,” but as a “love story” and as “falling in love with Christ.” Some of these themes recur in Benedict XVI’s speeches and in his encyclical letter. This Pope has always stressed the importance of the Church movements, seen by him as an important instrument for the evangelisation in Europe and in the world. In the wake of Pentecost last 3 June, which was celebrated with all the ecclesiastical movements, Benedict XVI remembered a definition by John Paul II: “The entire Church is one big movement animated by the Holy Spirit.”
In occasion of the audience in Rome, the priest that succeeded don Giussani to guide the movement, don Julian Carron diffused a letter to all the members of the CL which remembers that “Pope Benedict has been tied to our history in such a singular way that we feel him particularly close.”
They are at least 100 thousand members of the movement spread out in 75 countries in the world. In Asia, there are CL communities in Lebanon, Israel, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and China.