Holy because he is a father, holy because he took care of others, holy because he is a man of prayer and life given in the apostolate. Certainly it will be necessary to wait for a second miracle for Don Alberione, already blessed, to rise to the honors of the altar, but, for his family, the holiness of the founder was revealed throughout his life. “Holiness is not just doing a miracle, even if that is the way to canonization, it is what the Church asks as a” litmus test “”, he explains. Fr Domenico Soliman, postulator of the cause of canonization, “But the holiness of Don Alberione is linked above all to his paternity. It is because the Spirit was present and working in his life that he gave birth to a family and, therefore, he became a father. We have experienced », he continues,« that there are certain situations and experiences in life that flourish only when there is the life of God in you. I am speaking of ideas, apostolates, initiatives, a good that becomes concrete and lasts over time and is really for the benefit of all ». The postulator insists precisely on the presence of the Holy Spirit “whom he fertilized” and made possible the birth of ten branches of the Family, ten expressions of the Pauline charism and apostolate. “It is not only because Don Alberione had a beautiful idea that he managed to give life to everything we know, and it is not even a question of something sociological, but there is this germ of holy life, of life filled with the Spirit », He stresses again. And then his holiness, for the postulator, is revealed in the fact that he “gave his life, as he wrote in his autobiography,” to do something for God and for the men of the new century “”.
On the night between December 31, 1900 and January 1, 1901, “a night of prayer”, he senses that he must do something for the men and women of the new century. «Holiness» explains Don Soliman, «is not some kind of effort to become perfect, good, very good almost in an unreal way, it is not a self-transcending path. In Alberione it is the gift, which he receives from the Spirit, of understanding that his life was for others ». An understanding that makes its way, in him, already at sixteen. And which then continues and pushes him, among the few founders to act like this, to a real family. An extraordinary thing for the 20th century. «Here we see his fruitfulness», adds the postulator, «because he already thinks of the Congregation as a family in the initial project, not because his children decide, at a certain point, to get together. Here is the beauty of his industriousness ». A third aspect of his holiness can be seen, finally, “in the fact that he was a man of prayer and apostolate, able to read the signs of the times.” Don Alberione not only studied, but was able to understand that the people of his time “went away, emptied the churches. In a rapidly changing society, with modernity emerging, people no longer had the parish as a point of reference ». And then the founder begins to wonder what he could do for them. He realizes that «communication, which at the time was printed paper and books, what he called the ‘good press’, was the place where people knew, learned, in a certain sense, lived. Fr Alberione “, Fr Soliman underlines,” sees communication as the place where people not only learn and assimilate content, but where they re-elaborate a thought, where they acquire a mentality, where they assimilate the values of their life, the meaning of their own existence “. Alberione, in some way, precedes the Council and reads the signs of the times, as Vatican II will later say, in a constant relationship with the Lord, living his life not as a simple moral behavior or as a formalism, but as a conformation to Christ. .
«This is what he expresses using the words of Paul: ‘It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me’». Prayer and action, “the intuition”, as John Paul II underlined in his homily for his beatification, that it was necessary “to make known Jesus Christ, Way and Truth and Life,” to the men of our time with the means of our time “, as he liked to say”, drawing inspiration “from the apostle Paul, whom he defined as a” theologian and architect of the Church “, always remaining docile and faithful to the Magisterium of the Successor of Peter, a” beacon “of truth in a world often lacking in balance ideal references. “Let there be a group of saints to use these means”, this apostle of the new times used to repeat ».
“To serve man, wholly, so that he may be saved in everything by the Gospel of Christ”, reflected Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, who followed the process for beatification as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, “Is the far-sighted prophetic vision that characterizes the mystery of the singular charism of Don Giacomo Alberione, for whom the diffusion of good newspapers, magazines, books and then of films and radio and television programs was the real challenge of effective evangelization, on a par with the evolution of the times. The enterprising initiative of the founder of the Pauline Family thus began to pass through the roar of large presses, large runs, large distribution networks of communication products, which would become more and more people’s patrimony ».
And if his “paper pulpit”, the cardinal continued, “is a pulpit that now” sails “in the vast sea of the Internet and telematic networks, this is the boat of the apostles who must set sail today. Yes, because we certainly owe it to Don Alberione for having explicitly introduced the means of social communication into the pastoral care of the Church. He is credited with having been a pioneer in understanding that evangelization passes through the tools of social communication “. An estimate, that of Cardinal Saraiva, which, also thanks to the commitment and faith of Don Gino Valtorta, postulator for the beatification, led in 2002 to the recognition of the first miracle thanks to which Don Alberione was declared blessed on April 27 2003. For the second miracle, the one that would open the doors to canonization, we are still at a very early stage. There would have been one in the Philippines, the recovery from a tumor, but it is necessary to wait a few more years to establish if the recovery is definitive and then collect all the documentation to be submitted to the various judgments. Instead, there are many reports of graces and spiritual help that those who turn to the blessed get in their lives. And for all, awaiting the conclusion of the process for canonization, the exhortation of John Paul II applies who, in expressing thanks for the new blessed, said: “May his spiritual sons and daughters keep the spirit of origins, to correspond adequately to the needs of evangelization in today’s world “.
«Blessed Giacomo Alberione? He was a special soul who perfumed God with ink ”