Message sent to CL on the occasion of Fr. Giussani death by Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa

Dear brethren in Christ: I unite with you and the entire Movement of Communion and Liberation in deep thanksgiving to the Most Holy Trinity for the immense gift that Fr. Giussani has meant for the renewal of the Church in our time. Without a doubt, the inheritance of the founder of Communion and Liberation is a great gift to the Church, the Bride of Christ, in the charismatic flowering that accompanies and paves the way for the Pentecostal event of the Second Vatican Council. Fr. Giussani was a docile instrument of the Spirit to vivify the Body of Christ. With his life and teaching, the great tradition of the Church has been enriched with a joyful and missionary vivacity. He lived his ecclesiastical vocation with an “existential and historic authenticity,” a sign, according to the Holy Father, John Paul II, that characterizes the genuineness of the ecclesiastical dimension of the renewal movements. He indicated a pedagogy, a method, a journey toward the goal of holiness as the triumph of Christ in history. In this, he succeeded in being an excellent and persuasive teacher. His love for the Church and his filial loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff were exemplary. He worked for communion, not only within his spiritual family, but also between it and the other movements and ecclesial communities. He was able to translate his profound understanding of the patrimony of the faith incarnated in the course of 2,000 years of Christian thought into adequate and constructive categories and terms so that the Church could dialogue fruitfully with contemporary cultures and shine as sacrament and instrument of evangelization of the world. I thank the Lord in a particular way for the priestly seed left by Msgr. Luigi Giussani after visiting some places in Latin America, and my own Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile. With gratefulness, and through the intercession of the Mother of the Church, I ask Jesus Christ, “center of the cosmos and of history…who fully reveals man to man,” that His servant and apostle may now enjoy the fullness of glory. I also pray that Communion and Liberation may live a “creative faithfulness” to its founder, bearing abundant fruit in the new evangelization.
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa,
Archbishop of Santiago de Chile