Dearest Annalena, Francesco, Lucilla, Gloria, Clara, Teresa and Giovanni, I embrace you with all my heart and together with me, the entire Movement.

Right after Giorgio told me the news of Luigino’s death, I went to re-read the pages of a dialogue he had with Fr. Giussani during the 1978 CLU Equipe at Chiesa Valmalenco. When Fr. Giussani asked “What is Christianity for us? Look, even if I were an atheist, we have to find an answer that would hold for me too,” many university students offered their answers, but none of them were convincing for him, until Luigino spoke up. “I think that Christianity is the event of God who became a man, and this man said he was God and chose…”. Giussani interrupted him. “Stop, stop, we’ve got it! Because that’s all Christianity is! It’s a fact! A fact. Look, please, it’s not a matter of taste, of intellectual clarity, or of putting everything in its place. It’s a condition. It is the fundamental condition of every Christian thought, and of every Christian way of acting. Christianity is a fact! For this reason, kids, our faith, our being Christian is, above all, a fact that you can never remove from yourselves; there’s no digging it out with your fingernails, because you were seized by baptism.”

Ever since Christ seized him, making him His own through the encounter with Fr. Giussani, Luigino never removed from himself that “fact.” He spent his whole life in the Movement, which he followed with naïve boldness and impetuous passion. How many conversations with him forced me to become more aware of the “fact” that had seized me as well! Now his life is fulfilled in the glory of the Father, in the company of Fr. Giussani who loved him so much, and of many of his and our friends.

Finally, his restlessness will have found peace in the embrace of Christ victorious over death.