I met the movement of Communion and Liberation in 2004 when, after two years of the priesthood, I was sent to Rome for a licentiate and doctorate in Moral Theology. As I needed to improve my Italian, I stayed in Verbania for a while, in a residence of the diocese of Novara. I celebrated daily Mass in the chapel at the request of Fr. Eraldo De Agostini, who at the time was in charge of six or seven other churches.

One evening, Fr. Eraldo, a Bob Dylan fan, asked me to help him translate some of Dylan’s songs because, not knowing English, he had no idea what they said. “Even we Americans do not understand the English of Bob Dylan's songs!”, I replied, smiling. I suggested that he enable the subtitles on online videos so that he could translate them. “In exchange I will give you three books in English, which I cannot read anyway,” he replied. They were the three books from the PerCorso, The Religious Sense, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and Why the Church? They were my introduction to the movement.

That evening, Fr. Eraldo told me his story of conversion. An entrepreneur, destined to inherit his father's business, he was engaged to be married, but he felt empty inside. He had received a Catholic education, but was not practicing. Until one day, when he turned on the television during the Rimini Meeting and saw a journalist interviewing a happy, smiling young woman. “Why are you young people so happy?” he asked her. “Because we are in communion with Christ and with each other. We live true friendships here,” was her reply. That precise moment was the encounter that determined his conversion, because he realized what was missing in his life: a relationship with Christ and the Church. He started attending Mass again, broke off his engagement, renounced his family inheritance, and then became a priest.

When I returned to Rome, I lived with other American priests at the Casa Santa Maria, not far from the Trevi Fountain and the Gregorian University. The Superior of the house, Monsignor Steven Raica, now Bishop of Birmingham, Alabama, was also familiar with the movement and Fr. Giussani's writings. It was through discussions with him that I began to become more familiar with the figure of Fr. Giussani and the ideas expressed by CL.

In 2008, I returned to the United States. I was appointed Dean of theology and Professor of Moral Theology at the main seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Meanwhile, I was helping a 83-year-old priest in his parish. One Sunday I saw him conversing with a young Italian married couple, Marco and Simona, who had just had a baby boy, Tommaso. As they were talking they kept repeating words like “encounter” and “communion”; so after a while, I asked them, “Are you from CL?” They were amazed: “You are the first priest in Ohio we have heard talk about CL!” they replied. We immediately became friends. I then became Tommaso’s confirmation godfather and baptized their other five children. In the meantime, we started a small School of Community, meeting first at home and then at the seminary. We were a very small group until in 2014, when I was appointed administrator of Sacred Heart Italian Parish, also in Cincinnati, while maintaining my seminary assignments. So we had a place to do School of Community.

At Christmas that year, a new family, Tommaso and Margherita with their three children, moved to Cincinnati. As soon as they arrived, I had them bring the baby Jesus to place him in the crib. We became friends and they started inviting other people to our School of Community, including some Americans. Gradually we grew and began to do Advent and Lenten Exercises together with the communities in Indianapolis and Evansville, Indiana.

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In February 2016, while another CL priest, Fr. Richard Veras, was in my parish to preach the Exercises, I received the news of my impending transfer to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington. I left Cincinnati and my CL friends to go and discover the Washington community, where I started attending School of Community at Most Holy Redeemer in Kensington. There I met the priests of the St. Charles Fraternity, Fr. Jose Medina, Fr. Antonio Lopez and Fr. Paolo Prosperi, along with some Memores Domini.

Together with the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, the then Archbishop and now Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who is a friend of the movement, we organized fundraisers for the New York Encounter (the three-day cultural meeting open to all, held every year in New York), an event he regularly attended. The Nuncio, who knew the movement in Geneva and especially in Uganda, was a guest at the Rimini Meeting in 2018. He has always considered Fr. Giussani's contribution on education to be revolutionary. During my tenure at the Nunciature, moreover, we had some wonderful conversations about a book that was published at that time, Disarming Beauty by Fr. Julián Carrón. Over time, I became increasingly aware that Fr. Giussani’s thought is exactly what the Church needs today.



Both Cardinal Pierre and I, who was particularly concerned about how Pope Francis’ thought would be received in the United States, read Massimo Borghesi's book Jorge Mario Bergoglio. An intellectual biography. We found it very helpful in making certain aspects of the Holy Father's thought more widely known. Not least the influence of Fr. Giussani’s thought on the Pope’s formation, as documented in the book. We then helped organize a symposium in Milwaukee, inviting Borghesi himself as a speaker.

Over the years, my esteem for the movement and Fr. Giussani have grown. When I returned to Cincinnati at the end of 2019 as pastor of a parish with a school of 1,160 students, I decided, together with friends from CL, to organize a study course on The Risk of Education. Seventy people signed up, but unfortunately the course was interrupted because of the pandemic. A period during which even our School of Community was forced to gather virtually. But we also opened it to parishioners, some of whom joined us. As we grew in numbers, a second group was formed on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. During the pandemic, the Way of the Cross was also held online, with nearly 200 people logging on. Little by little, we have offered more and more people the chance to encounter Fr. Giussani's charism and the movement.

On February 22, 2022, we celebrated the Mass with the Archbishop on the anniversary of Fr. Giussani's death, and afterwards we organized the Stations of the Cross, this time on the university campus. We were just getting back into the swing of things when I was appointed Bishop of Columbus, and on May 31 I received episcopal ordination. I chose Veni per Mariam as my episcopal motto to honor Fr. Giussani and CL, who have greatly influenced my spirituality and my approach to education and evangelization.

Here in Columbus, our community is still small but it is growing and continues to meet regularly for School of Community on the campus of The Ohio State University, whose executive director, Fr. Adam Streitenberger, is a friend of the movement. As a charitable work, we distribute food to the hungry at St. Joseph's Cathedral. Last year, two young people from CLU, Roberto and Marco, were here and had a wonderful experience. I had the privilege of continuing to preach the Lent and Advent Exercises, despite the many duties of my episcopal ministry. In September we had a meeting on The Risk of Education with Cardinal Pierre and some educators. Living the movement, we want to rediscover and preserve Fr. Giussani's charism, not in a rigid and “petrified” way, but living the joy of the encounter with Christ, the joy of being disciples with others and for others. For we are privileged by being called and sent, having the opportunity to experience communion while carrying out what the mission asks of us. My life and ministry have been blessed by CL, and my desire now is to make known the love of Christ that I have experienced in and through my friends in the movement.