Florence, 15 June 2024 – Having had it removed in agreement with Pope francesco the formal ecclesiastical prohibition on the dissemination of ‘Pastoral experiences‘, having claimed testimony before the Holy Father in the liturgy he celebrated in Florence for the fifth national conference of the Italian Church, in November 2015, not to mention Bergoglio’s visit to Barbiana in 2017, 50 years after the death of the prior and his invitation to imitate Don Lorenzo. The Cardinal Giuseppe Betori he did a lot for the memory of Don Lorenzo Milani and offers the coordinates to give a living future to his figure: “Without ‘Pastoral Experiences’ Barbiana becomes just a school, while we are faced with a testimony of human and Christian formation through a school – explains the archbishop – I have not personally met Don Milani, but I read your book in ’66, when I was a seminarian. I believe that it can be a model for the Florentine Church and for the clergy in the ability to read reality, both from an ecclesial and social and civil point of view. We must set out on this path: read reality like Milani did.”
From Don Milani “we must not copy the solutions he gave at the time, but the analyzes that led him to make precise choices, in a phase of decisive transition from the peasant civilization to the industrial one that affected his children and his people, while the world still sought class submission.” Therefore, learn from time to time what tools are used to read reality, “otherwise we do it an ideology of Don Milani, without following him”.
Humanity has passed from the plow to artificial intelligence and everything must be directed to safeguard and promote a human dimension, defending work: “Everything is there: the dignity of the human person, justice, work, protection” and here our thoughts go to the little ones, to little Kataleya “behind an impassable wall. There are two little girls at the beginning and end of my episcopate in Florence. The first, Linda, welcomed me to Meyer. She didn’t make it, overcome by a tumor. And there’s Kataleya. The first is an angel. The second one we hope will return to earth.”
