To Fr. Daniele Bonanni, Fr. Luca De Chiara, Fr. Giorgio Ghigo, Fr. Giacomo Landoni, Fr. Andrew Lee, Fr. Andreas Scholz and Fr. Philip Stokman. To Giovanni Barrani, Ignazio Beghi, João Brito, Matteo Pagani and Martino Zavarise.

Dearest friends,

the entire movement of Communion and Liberation touchingly joins in the celebration you are holding today for your priestly and diaconal ordinations. And it is a great celebration, for one cannot experience anything but genuine joy, nor can one do anything but share it passionately with friends, when you respond for life to the call that Christ has had the Grace to address to each of you.

A call that, by His will, arose and became more and more corresponding within the companionship of the movement and in the journey with the Fraternity of St. Charles, now making you witnesses to the world of a living faith, precisely because it is lived in this communion. A living faith that is eager to return to others the Love received. Missionaries, as Pope Francis recently said, “are those who do everything so that, through their witness, their prayer, their intercession, Jesus might pass by. […] Faith is born by attraction. One does not become Christian because they are forced by someone, but because they have been touched by love.” (General Audience, June 7, 2023). For this, I warmly thank your families, your friends, your Superiors and the entire Fraternity of St. Charles.

I am sorry I cannot be there in person and I leave as my best wishes the words that Fr. Giussani addressed to a young man who asked him how to understand his mission, “What is my mission, according to what or–which is the same–how should I serve my destiny? Listen, don’t be concerned about anything, except one thing: to love the ideal. You have to love the ideal in its concreteness, because Ideal, God, Christ, Destiny are all synonymous terms. Love your destiny, ask God to let you clearly know and love your destiny, then throughout the various circumstances God will send you where He needs to send you. It is not up to you to choose your mission. Don’t be afraid, He will point it out to you. We do not choose our vocation, God gives it to us, by letting us find it within a particular context. However, we must love destiny, that is, we must love the reason to live; God demands reason” (Realtà e giovinezza. La sfida [Reality and Youth: The Challenge], Bur, Milan 2019, p. 96).

I embrace you tightly and ask you to remember the Pope, the Church and the movement in your precious prayers.