The evening dedicated to the thought, spirituality and teaching of Albino Luciani, bishop, patriarch and Pope, which will be held tomorrow, Thursday 25 August, at 21, at the Albino Luciani Museum in Canale d’Agordo (Bl). The title of the event, in view of Luciani’s beatification in the Vatican on September 4, is inspired by the expression of the newly elected Pope, when he addressed his first greeting to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
The evening will be a conversation between the Belluno priest Davide Fiocco, director of the new series of Edizioni Messaggero Padova (Emp) inspired by Pope John Paul I, as well as co-author of the Positio, and Patrizia Luciani, namesake of the Pontiff, but without any family ties with him. , author of one of the volumes in the series. He will introduce Loris Serafini, director of the Papa Luciani Foundation. The meeting will be moderated by Alberto Vela, head of the Franciscan publishing house in Padua. Free admission subject to availability, in compliance with the health regulations in force at the time of the event.
The new Emp series entitled “I am dust” offers in short volumes the teaching, thought and spirituality of “Albino Luciani – Giovanni Paolo I”. These are simple and pleasant books, as was Luciani’s style, based on a serious historiographical reconstruction. “Traces of actuality” is the volume that inaugurates the series. It is written by Fiocco himself – who is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Vatican Foundation John Paul I – with the aim of highlighting some current ideas of the unforgettable figure of John Paul I. The second volume, “The worker has the right alla sua mercede ”by Patrizia Luciani, analyzes the theme of work in the writings of Albino Luciani, from the time he was bishop to his very short pontificate.
The affectionate relationship between the Messaggero publishing house and Albino Luciani is long-standing. In the early seventies it was Father Francesco Saverio Pancheri, director of the “Messenger of Saint Anthony”, who proposed a journalistic collaboration to the then patriarch of Venice, undertaken with evident pastoral intent. On the columns of the monthly antoniano, from May 1971 to December 1974, Luciani wrote a very original series of imaginary letters to historical and mythical characters of all times and places, giving substance to a far from superficial analysis of those difficult and tortuous, with a very pleasant style and subtle irony. These letters converged in January 1976 in the first edition of “Illustrissimi” published by the Edizioni Messaggero Padova. It was immediately a success, so much so that reprints and new editions followed, the last in 2017. The one of October 1978 had been personally reviewed, a few days before his death, by the author who had become Pope, who had made some corrections. . The book’s publishing success is vast also in the world with various translations: in English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, Portuguese, Slovak, Chinese, Hungarian, Polish, Maltese, Indonesian, Slovenian, Japanese, Croatian. In 1980 a braille reproduction was also published.
