Beethoven, the books, an endless dialogue. In memory of Fr Giussani

His ability to listen was extraordinary, animated by words and gestures, by the smile and by the welcome, which he knew how to give to expressions of joy and suffering: to those of others, and to his own. Tomorrow the 100th anniversary of the birth of the founder of Communion and Liberation

From my inner memory, as Saint Augustine defines it in his splendid book, Confessions, which we should all read and reread, my memories of Fr Luigi Giussani are brightly reborn, which have given meaning to my life. In Novara, I was the director of a psychiatric hospital, and then, since 1978, the year of its closure, the director of a psychiatry ward, located inside the city’s civil hospital. This allowed me to have, as assistants, some young doctors, who specialized in psychiatry at the University of Milan, and came to work with us in Novara. Life is unpredictable in its unfolding: some of these young assistants were part of Communion and Liberation, and they made me meet don Luigi Giussani. I have a vivid and very clear memory of him: his words, his smile, his attention and tenderness, his testimony of listening to the soul and of a luminous hope against all hope, as Saint Paul defines it, continue to relive in my memory and in my heart.