Two Conferences on Aberrophile Priest Don Lorenzo Milani

The Catholic-communist and homophile priest Don Lorenzo Milani, whose grave Pope Francis visited.

 By Pier Giorgio Macchi

 Even Giorgio La Pira1, who was initially considered the "spiritual father" of "Catho-Communism", backed down when the 1968 protests reached the Archbishop's Curia of Florence, and reaffirmed to Don Lorenzo Milani (and the protesting "red priests"), led by Don Enzo Mazzi 1927–2011), his loyalty to the See of Peter.  When a journalist asked him which side he was on, he replied succinctly with the words of St. Ambrose: “Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia,” which astonished everyone, starting with the Piarist Father Ernesto Balducci (1922-1992), the leader of the Florentine protest.  Perhaps that is why Don Milani called La Pira an “old arteriosclerotic.”  But this is nothing compared to the definition given by Milani, the prior of Barbiana, of his archbishop, Cardinal Ermenegildo Florit, successor to the great Florentine archbishop Elia Dalla Costa, whom he called an “arteriosclerotic possessed by the devil”.

 Cardinal Ermenegildo Florit (1901-1885) had to carry on his weak shoulders the heavy cross of protest of the "red clergy" of Florence: from Don Milani's school in Barbiana, where it was taught that "obedience is no longer a virtue", and where his infamous "Letter to a Teacher", a kind of "Mao booklet" for students, to the Isolotto community (whose leader, Don Enzo Mazzi, died without reconciling with the Church and asked for a civil burial and cremation).  ), where the demonstrators even occupied the church and forcibly removed Monsignor Alba, the bishop's delegate.  Very sad times that led to the Catholic-Communist demonstrators even breaking into the Curia and staging a shameful “trial” against Archbishop Florit.

And today?  This year the Curia of Florence celebrates not the centenary of the birth of its archbishop, Cardinal Florit, but the centenary of the “rebel priest” Don Lorenzo Milani (1923-1967), who insulted him so shamefully.  Under the chairmanship of Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence, Don Gianluca Bitossi, Rector of the Archbishop's Seminary, and the left-wing Catholic former minister Rosy Bindi, a meeting will take place from Friday, November 24th to Saturday November 25th, initially  in the seminary and the theological faculty, then in San Donato in Calenzano, where Don Milani removed the cross from the parish school for the first time.  The entire “national” and “international” left will be present: from the judge Beniamino Deidda to the ultra-progressive theologian Severino Dianich, from Don Andrea Bigalli.  who celebrated civil weddings in the community and invited people to “throw napalm at (Lega leader) Matteo Salvini”, to Don Luca Mazzinghi and Don Stefano Tarocchi and so on.  The only one who will have no voice is Betori's predecessor, Cardinal Florit, the target of Don Milani's ideological hatred.

Of the opposite character, but much more in keeping with historical reality, is the conference that will take place in Verona on Saturday, November 25th, in the central Piazza Brà, in the Liston 12 restaurant, where Vito Comencini will present the anthology with the telling title:  “Da Barbiana al Forteto – don Milani e il Donmilanismo” (“From Barbiana to  Forteto. Don Milani and Donmilanism”), edited by Pucci Cipriani and Ascanio Ruschi (Publisher Solfanelli, Chieti 2023, 184 pages, Euro 13.30).  The book brings together some important testimonies, including that of the then Dean of Florence, Don Mario Faggi, who died in 2015.  The editorial director of the website “Il Covile” Stefano Borselli confirms the “ideological connection” between Barbiana and il Forteto.  Il Forteto, a left-wing showcase project, was in reality an Italian “Odenwald School,” a place of horror where children were systematically sexually abused.  Further contributions come from: Carlo Manetti, Roberto de Mattei, Lorenzo Gasperini, Cristina Siccardi, Enrico Nistri, Pier Luigi Tossani, Alberto De Marchi, Pier Angelo Vassallo, Armando Ermini and the editors Ruschi and Cipriani themselves.

You can read what Don Milani and Il Forteto are all about here:

Pope's visit to the grave of Don Lorenzo Milani - Which model of priesthood does Francis want to promote?

Don Milani, child sexual abuse and Pope Francis

 Translation: Giuseppe Nardi

 Image: Correspondenza Romana

 1 Giorgio La Pira (1904–1977), lawyer, Christian Democrat, Dominican tertiary, from 1933 full professor of Roman law at the University of Florence, where he lived until the end of his life in a modest cell in the Dominican monastery, 1946–1948 member of the constitutional committee  Assembly of Italy (1946-1948), between 1948 and 1977 Member of Parliament in three of the seven legislative periods, 1948-1952 State Secretary in the government of Alcide De Gasperi (DC), 1951-1957 and 1961-1965 Mayor of Florence, belonged to the left-wing Catholic wing of the  Christian Democratic Party.

AMDG