Milan: Archbishop Delpini visits the Palace of Justice in December 2023 – Photogram
To “succeed in overcoming” the evil represented by illegality and organized crime, the action of the legislator, the judiciary and the police forces is not enough: “a moral conversion is necessary, an interior fortitude is necessary, it is necessary that honest citizens are united in defending the common good” said the Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, speaking at the anti-mafia demonstration in support of Nicola Gratteri on 5 July 2022. “It is necessary to demonstrate that honest work is more solid and more profitable of the dishonest work. It is necessary to demonstrate that concern for the common good favors and enriches citizens, more than the obsession with one’s own private interest. A moral revolution is necessary for there to be a cure for legality. This is why I invite everyone to reflect on the necessary moral conversion and the unity of all the healthy parts of society, so that evil is eradicated and those who do evil are convinced that it is better to do good.”
In this “resistance” and “moral revolution”, so necessary also in the Ambrosian land, against usury, corruption, “the infiltration of organized crime into politics and businesses”, believers participate as “sons and daughters of the light » who « believe in God, therefore they trust, pray and work, react to discouragement and encourage each other. They don’t expect to defeat all the mafias quickly, but they believe that the battle can be won day by day, meeting by meeting, person by person.” They believe in God “and therefore they gather to pray, to protest, to hope, to build paths of legality, justice, peace”, as Delpini said at the ecumenical vigil in memory of the innocent victims of the mafia, held in Milan on 20 March 2022. Even when “good seems defeated and commitment seems useless”, they know that “God continues to be an ally of good and therefore they invoke every day for the Kingdom of God to come”.
These interventions are now published in the volume “More just, more free” (In Dialogue, 112 pages, 12 euros), which collects speeches and reflections on legality and justice held by Delpini from 2019 to 2023. From the speech to the Milan City Council on 25 September last year to those held at the Palace of Justice and on other occasions, words to reinterpret challenges and drifts of the economy, politics, society, justice and call for awareness and commitment, both personal and community. Strong and clear words, such as those to denounce the “invasion” of dirty money and the growth of “unbearable” inequalities. Even in Milan. But, always, words to fuel hope and invoke alliances for the common good. Authentic defender civitatisas is the vocation of the Ambrosian shepherds.
The interventions of Giuseppe Ondei, president of the Court of Appeal of Milan, Mattia F. Ferrero, president of the Union of Catholic Jurists of Milan, and of Monsignor Carlo Azzimonti, moderator Curiae of the diocese of Milan. And they are words to «solicit and underline a personal disposition and a specific responsibility in the way of acting, working, governing in a “fairer” way – writes in the preface Gianni Borsa, president of the AC Ambrosiana – to guarantee everyone to be “more free”.
«My hope is rooted in the Christian faith», wrote Delpini in an article published on Chiesadimilano.it in which he resumes the letter to the parish priests on usury and the mafias of 2 January 2019. «And this fuels an esteem for humanity and the conviction that honest women and men, who are capable of working together, capable of looking into the future, they can take up the task of fixing the world.”
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