I have known Father Lorenzo Mastrocinque since 1969. It was the year I entered the seminary. The first impression: a modern, lively and industrious friar, very committed to the formation and education of youth, with the very particular habit of long hair and the 60s sideburns of the beat-generation.
I got to know him better when Francesco, his medical nephew, enrolled and then graduated brilliantly at the Redemptor Hominis Higher Institute of Religious Sciences, of which I was director. By attending him I understood the spiritual depth of the Franciscan and the intense and generous apostolic effort, always carried out with enchanting simplicity and a spirit of poverty.
On August 13, 2000, the year of the Great Jubilee, to my great surprise, Father Lorenzo invites me to preside over a solemn celebration and to bless the Luminous Cross, raised on the hill between two reservoirs of water, a work of modern engineering technology, to protect the Contrada Malvizza in Montecalvo Irpino and neighboring populations.
It is the providential opportunity to get to know in a more complete way the missionary work of the friar originally from Foglianise: the church in honor of the Queen of Peace begun in 1990 with the authorization of Archbishop Carlo Minchiatti and consecrated in 2000 by Archbishop Serafino Sprovieri , the Via Crucis in 2006 and the statues of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the square in front of the church and the intense evangelization activity carried out as Rector of the church dedicated to the Virgin, through the festive Mass, assistance to the numerous elderly and sick, the formation of young people prepared for First Communion, the celebration of Baptisms, Confirmations and Weddings, prayer and volunteer groups with intense spiritual moments and engaging experiences of socialization.
The peculiar sharing of the “Medjugorje phenomenon”, which represents “the largest movement of Catholic masses of the post-conciliar period” (Vittorio Messori) has made Malvizza an important station of Marian spirituality in our territory.
Subsequently Pope Benedict XVI appointed a commission chaired by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, to say a definitive word on one of the most extraordinary of the apparitions of the Madonna, a source of sincere conversion for many pilgrims who return literally transformed from the small village of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It is really true that the friends of God and the devotees of the Virgin Mary “are always vigorous and luxuriant and, even in old age, these righteous still produce fruit” (Psalm 92).
Father Lorenzo nourishes and cultivates a great passion for the Mother of Jesus and a great passion for souls to be saved with prayer, the apostolate and the consistent witness of a life, all consecrated to the building of the Kingdom of God.
His youthful enthusiasm even at a mature age arouses esteem and admiration in my soul.
For this reason I felt the need to give him the fourth station of the Via Crucis, which marks the meeting of Jesus with the Mother, in the painful Passion. For this same reason, when I can, I promptly respond to his invitations, making my priestly ministry available to the faithful. Thanks to Father Lorenzo Mastrocinque, the Malvizza district, which in the etymology “Mala vizza” means bird of ill omen, has become the Land of Jesus Christ crucified and risen and the Oasis of Hope for those who resort to the Queen of Peace.
Inspired by legends, the ancients told that a bad tavern keeper lived here who killed the travelers of the Via Traianea, plundering them of their goods. Legend has it that the gods, angry at the monstrosities of which the innkeeper was stained, made him sink, together with his servants, into a chasm, where today lies a small volcanic lake called “Bolle della Malvizza”.
The craters from which the gaseous emissions come out are called “Mefite”. According to the legend, every year on August 15th, the tavernkeeper would still make his lamentations heard. Today in the same street, Father Lorenzo does not kill passers-by but offers the grace that communicates the fullness of life and eternal life. Even today at Malvizza the pilgrims are gently forced to stop in front of Father Lorenzo Mastrocinque who is a true “kidnapper of souls”. But “time runs away irreparably” and on 4 October, at 1.30pm, at 92 years of age, Father Lorenzo returned to God on the day when Italy celebrates the “most Italian of saints and the holiest of Italians”, as Pius XII said in 1939, when he proclaimed St. Francis of Assisi, the main patron saint of Italy.
In recent years, Father Lorenzo often opened his curtain to nicely recount the encounter with St. Peter as soon as he arrived on the shore of eternity, he said: “I will say to St. Peter, in no uncertain terms, you must let me in, because despite being a great sinner, I have always loved and prayed a lot to Our Lady ”. I am sure that not even St. Peter was able to resist the force of such a great trust in the Mother of God that in the litanies of Loreto we invoke the “Gate of Paradise”.
MONS. PASQUALE MARIA MAINOLFI