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Catholic World News News Feature

Founder of Communion and Liberation dies at 82 February 22, 2005

Msgr. Luigi Giussani, the founder of the Communion and Liberation movement, died early Tuesday morning, February 22, at the age of 82.

Born near Milan in 1922, Luigi Giussani taught at the Milan seminary after his ordination, specializing in the study of Eastern and Protestant thought. During the 1950s he began a new effort to evangelize young people, founding what was first known as the Student Youth group and later as Communion and Liberation.

Communion and Liberation is a movement devoted to encouraging a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and transforming society through the faith. The group preaches that it is only through Communion that one finds true freedom. Today the group has spread to 75 different countries, with over 100,000 people.

Although Communion and Liberation has no formal membership, and individuals are free to participate in the "schools of community" as they wish, the movement has become highly influential in the Church, particularly in Italy. Among the prominent Italian public figures associated with the group are former President Giulio Andreotti and Rocco Buttiglione, whose nomination for a seat in the European Council provoked a heated controversy last October.

In a message that he sent to Msgr. Giussani in April 2004, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Communion and Liberation, Pope John Paul II praised the movement for providing an "experience that profoundly changes people's lives." He said that the group was an antidote to the "widespread tendency toward relativism, skepticism, and nihilism," helping to prepare Christians for their "new apostolic duties of the third millennium."

Msgr. Giussani died in Milan, after battling for several days with pneumonia. His many followers will have an opportunity to pay their last respects in the chapel of the Sacred Heart Institute, where he was a theology professor from 1964 until 1990. His funeral will be held in the Duomo in Milan on Thursday, February 24. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger will preside, as the Pope's representative.