Pope: Don Milani, the mission of educating a "free conscience"

Francis travels to Barbiana, in Italy. Don Milani a priest who wanted to "awaken the human in people to open them to the divine". "Only by fully possesing the word is it possible to discern among the many and often confused messages that rain down upon us, and to give expression to the deep instances of our heart, as well as the expectations of justice of so many brothers and sisters waiting for justice."

Barbiana (AsiaNews) - Don Lorenzo Milani, "a priest who testified to the gift of oneself to  Christ, to encountering our brothers and sisters in their needs and serving them, to defend and promote their dignity with the same gift that Jesus Himself showed us, up to the cross. " This is how Pope Francis defined the priest who is seen as a symbol and model of integral education focused on those most in need. Speaking in in Barbiana, a small village near Florence, he recalled how this model and commitment of Don Milani also caused the priest to suffer no small amount of "bitterness".

The reference is to the misunderstandings suffered by Don Milani, which led to him being transferred to Barbiana, a small village of 84 residents, but where, in the two rooms of his house he created the first full-time school, reaching out to the people with the motto "I care". The phrase written on a sign at the entrance summed up the educational aims of a school geared towards the raising of civil and social consciousness.

In the small square in front of the little church, there were a hundred people. These were the  students of Don Milani. "You, the Pope said to them, are witnesses to how a priest has lived his mission, in the places where the Church has called him, with full fidelity to the Gospel, and full fidelity to each of you, who the Lord had entrusted to him. And you are witness to his educational passion, his intent to awaken human beings to open them to the divine. Hence his dedication to the school, with a choice that he would put into motion in an even more radical way here in Barbiana. Don Lorenzo did not see the school as something different from his priestly mission, but the concrete way to do that mission, giving it a solid foundation and enabling it to reach for heaven. And when the Bishop's decision led him from Calenzano to here, among the young people of Barbiana, he immediately realized that if the Lord had allowed this detachment, it was to give him new children to nurture and to love. "

"Give the poor the word, because without the word there is no dignity and therefore no freedom and justice: this is what Don Milani teaches. And it is the word that will open the way to full citizenship in society, through work, and full membership in the Church, with a conscious faith. This is also the case in our own time, in which possession of the word enables us to discern between the many and often confused messages that rain down upon us, and to give expression to the deep instances of our heart, as well as the expectations of justice of so many brothers and sisters waiting for justice. Of that full humanization that we claim for every person on this earth, besides bread, home, work, family, possession of the written word is an instrument of freedom and fraternity. "

The Pope expressed a thankfulness to the teachers. "Yours - he told them - is a mission full of obstacles but also of joys. But above all it is a mission. A mission of love, because you can not teach without love and without the awareness that what you give is a right that you recognize, that of learning. There are many things to be taught, but the essential thing is the growth of a free consciousness capable of confronting reality and of guiding it in love driven by the desire to compromise with others to take charge of their labors and wounds, to escape from all selfishness, to serve the common good. "

To the priests, finally, the Pope recalled "the priestly dimension of Don Lorenzo Milani". "It all comes from being a priest. But, in turn, his being a priest has an even deeper root: his faith. A totalizing faith, which becomes a total giving to the Lord, and that in the priestly ministry finds the full and fulfilled form in the young convert. "

"Don Lorenzo also teaches us to love the Church as he loved her, with the frankness and the truth that can also create tensions, but never fractures, abandoning. We love the Church, dear brothers, and let us love it, showing it as a caring mother of all, especially of the poorest and most fragile, both in social life and in personal and religious life. The Church that Don Milani has shown to the world has this maternal and thoughtful face, extending to give everyone the opportunity to meet God and thereby give consistency to one's own person in all of their dignity. Before I conclude, I can not keep silent that my gesture now wishes to be a response to Fr. Lorenzo's repeated request to his bishop, namely that his fidelity to the Gospel and the uprightness of his pastoral action be recognised and understood. In a letter to the Bishop he wrote: "If you do not honor me today with any solemn act, my whole apostolate will appear as a private matter ..." From Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli, of fond memory, onwards the Archbishops of Florence have on several occasions given this recognition to Don Lorenzo. Today, it is the Bishop of Rome. This does not erase the bitternesses that accompanied Don Milani's life - it is not about erasing or denying history, but of understanding the circumstances and humanity at stake - rather it means that the Church recognizes in that life an exemplary way of serving the Gospel, the poor, and the Church herself. " (FP)