It is not easy for me to talk about my story in front of so many people, but I understand that such beauty must be shared. It all started in 1992. I was a young physiotherapist at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. I had been working there since 1987, when one day my boss told me that the next day I would have to treat a patient named Fr. Luigi Giussani for severe back pain. I knew who he was, because I had gone to high school in the 1970s and in those years you had to “necessarily” be in politics. I was a hard-core communist. Over time things had softened; by 1992 I was no longer so ideologized, but I still had nothing to do with the movement and did not attend church. The next day, at the scheduled time, I went to the waiting room and saw a little man with wonderful eyes, with two big bodyguards, one on the right and one on the left. I thought, "Look at this priest who has bodyguards." They were actually two of his great friends – Carlo Wolfsgruber and Ivan Colombo. I introduced myself and then we went to the gym to start the treatment. That was the most important hour of my life. I have never felt so valued in my life, ever! No one had looked at me with that passion, with that love, with that good that was not just good, it was good that overflowed with esteem. I thought to myself, "But this guy does not even know me, how can he value me so much?" He was interested in me, he kept asking me to tell him what I was doing. I explained things to him, and he asked me more questions, very appropriate questions, questions that even my students do not ask me. When that first hour with him ended, I vividly remember thinking, "I do not know what it is, but this is something I want to follow for the rest of my life."

We continued with the treatments, he became my patient, and then we became friends and remained friends for years. He valued me so much and this empowered me to such an extent that I could probably understand an Astrophysics theorem in front of him. But the thing that impressed me so much from the first meeting was his discretion. He never tried to convince me to do anything, ever.. Yet within this discreet, tiptoeing relationship, within this affection, within this great esteem he had, those questions about the meaning of life that I foolishly thought only came during adolescence resurfaced. In fact, they had reappeared in my friendship with him, but because I was clueless it took time. At that time, I was 30 years old and did not receive communion again until I was 42, so it was not exactly an easy path. On the other hand, what I had encountered was so good that I could not adhere to it just out of formality. Also, my relationship with Fr. Gius was free, nothing was asked of me in return. However, it was a path, a journey in which I felt absolutely accompanied in a wonderful way. By him in the first place, who despite having a thousand commitments, would come to my house about once a month to have dinner with me. My whole family, my little children, were absolutely captivated with this person who loved us, valued us, and did that with everybody. It was something none of us had ever experienced. He used to tell parables from the Gospel at the dinner table, and it was exciting to hear. We felt we were inside the parable: it was not a story, but the testimony of events that had happened to people long before me who had taken the same path that I had also taken. Then Mariella, the friends from the house of the San Raffaele and of Mocine, with whom I experienced the beauty of a free and respectful relationship, devoid of formalism.

Within this experience we changed: I changed, my wife Anna changed, our children changed. And some truly incredible things happened. I have so many anecdotes to tell, which give an idea of who Fr. Giussani was....

Let me give one illustrative example. It was Easter 1993 and I had begun to spend time with some friends of the movement because I wanted to understand the meaning of this experience. At the San Raffaele, where I was working, there was a Memores house with whom I often met, indeed at one point, at Fr. Giussani's suggestion, they proposed that I attend their house meeting (something totally out of the ordinary, as he was!). That spring Dario, my dear friend Dario, asked Anna and me if we wanted to go with him to the Holy Thursday gesture at the Caravaggio Shrine (the town where I live). We accepted. I remember coming out of that gesture dazed because I did not understand anything (I understand little now, let alone then) but I was moved, with a sense of being before something great, beautiful, true. On the way out Dario said to me, "Look, there is Fr. Gius, go say hello." Indeed, he was there with a number of priests and other people. I did not want to disturb him, but finally I took courage and said, "Fr. Gius!" He turned around, saw me, ran up to me, hugged me in a crazy way and started crying like a baby saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." All I could say to him was, "You managed to keep me in church for three hours."

Read also – Fr. Giussani: A revolution of the self

I will never forget that. With Fr. Gius I began to ask myself questions, to have the feeling that reality is always positive, because that was what he was witnessing to me. I also saw him as a patient; when a colleague or head doctor would come in, he could always grasp their point of value, making them feel like I did when I was with him. That was his method of relationship.
However, life also challenges you, and it happened to me four years ago when Anna, the woman I have loved all my life, became ill with pancreatic cancer. In the evening, after we had received the results, I went home and asked my friends from the movement, Massimo and Daniela, to say a Rosary together, because I did not know what to do. The next day we met, prayed the Rosary, and the next day, and the next…After a year, Anna went to Heaven and that year we prayed the Rosary every day at 9:15 p.m with between two and thirty people who came to our house. It was wonderful company. I can say without shame that I have spent the best moments of my life within this companionship as I accompanied Anna in the last year of her life, serving my wife as she was dying. Just a month before she died, Anna and I said to each other that it had been the year – within the drama – that
that had given us the most beautiful and profound moments, a presentiment of the meaning of our existence. That could not have happened if it had not been for Fr. Giussani, because he was the one who witnessed that positivity in life to me, who taught me that everything can be an occasion. He was there with us in that very difficult year. And he is still with me, together with Anna, every day, even if sometimes I forget.