Citizens and saints

We need saints. To save the world. There's no need for theories and chatter. Saints are needed. Those, that is, who take the Gospel literally.

It was written one day in 1937 by a country parish priest named Don Primo Mazzolari, born in 1890. From his small Mantuan parish of Bozzolo, he saw the world headed towards the horror of war, which would begin two years later.

He then wrote that «for a world dying of hunger, of misery, of heaviness, of hatred, which the most ferocious selfishness devours, words are not enough. Someone needs to go out and pitch the tent of love alongside that of hatred, openly declaring itself against all the ferocities of the hour, wherever they are found, under whatever name they hide, in an effort of social sanctity that restores a soul to this poor world of ours that has lost." For this idea Don Primo irritates the fascism in power and risks confinement. But he continues: «It is not enough to repeat the eternal words of the Gospel. If we Christians felt the duty to also be citizens and men, to blend in with the crowd instead of fleeing it, to speak with all the voices he understands and in the language he only understands; if we disputed with ardent charity the place of those who claim to lead it, if we understood, in a word, that our duty is to be saints! We need saints. Everyone now recognizes that salvation depends on the number of them, on their courage and their effort. The world searches with anguish, not only for the righteous, but for a generation of saints, who will also be valid for the city and will correct its institutions and customs according to the rules of eternal justice of the Gospel, bringing the beyond a little closer, in here".

Don Primo himself sought sanctity. Paying very high prices. Persecuted by fascism, but also by his beloved Church, viewed with suspicion for his ideas on peace, justice, the poor and their rights. Under Pius XII he will be punished. But finally, Archbishop Montini – later Paul VI – invited him to speak in the cathedral in Milan. And Pope John will welcome it, calling it "trumpet of the Holy Spirit in the land of Mantua".

Today, almost a century after that was written, Don Mazzolari's recipe is still the only one that can truly save the world. To put an end to wars, we need saints. Nothing more than this. People who bring the over there closer to the over here. Nothing less.


Renzo Agasso
NP February 2024