Rafael Gerez. You’re relatively young, but you had the opportunity to meet Fr. Luigi Giussani personally and to enter into a relationship with him while you were a university student involved with the young people of CL. What did the encounter with him mean for you? What was it about him that fascinated you?

Davide Prosperi. The answer is very simple: everything. I was fascinated by everything about his person, everything that was generated in human history through him. Right away, after I met him, I wanted to be part of this history. I met Fr. Giussani personally for the first time exactly on my twenty-third birthday, the 6th of October, 1995, the day he received the Catholic Culture Award in Bassano del Grappa. I was there with my brother and some friends because of a series of circumstances that would take too long to describe. I met him one on one before the award ceremony and he invited me to his house. He told me he had been given a bottle of Barolo and asked if I liked wine; I said that I liked wine but I would like even more the opportunity to have lunch with him. He took me seriously and a month later invited me to his home in Gudo Gambaredo, where he lived together with members of Memores Domini. That was the beginning of a personal relationship that continued almost to the end of his life [...]

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