Crusade

The pale, ailing little priest prepared for his speech as usual, by spending four or five hours in concentrated prayer. This time, he fainted as he knelt in prayer, and had to be carried to the rostrum. There his strength returned and the words poured from him with such power and passion that many of his hearers wept.

To Father Riccardo Lombardi such experiences as this one in Sicily are part of the day's work. But the day's work to Father Lombardi smacks of the miraculous, for he feels himself to be a man possessed. "It is not I who do these things," he says, repeatedly striking his breast with his white, bunched fingers. "It is Jesus." And all up & down Italy, in the big cities and the little towns, the people believe that it is Jesus indeed.

Wherever Father Lombardi goes, the crowds turn out. In Milan and Palermo, crowds of 120,000 to 140,000 have stood in awestruck silence to hear him. When Communists are sent to heckle him--to "burst the bubble of Father Lombardi"--they often find themselves unable to speak; sometimes they are moved even to renounce their political faith. And Italians who have remained cynically on the political sidelines are stirred by this unpretentious priest as no one has stirred them since Saint Francis of Assisi.

"See the Results." Riccardo Lombardi was born 40 years ago in Naples to a devout, middle-class family from Piedmont. He began preaching while still a student at the University of Padua (he estimates that he has talked to a round total of 4,000,000 people). His favorite authors are the two great Catholic mystics, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, and in his tiny, bare, blue-walled room in Rome's Via Ripetta he spends most of his time praying. During his travels he tries to keep himself always "in communion with God."

Says he: "I find strength, not in books, not in reasoning, nor even in feeling, but in prayer alone. ... I feel Jesus' presence. I can't explain it because it's supernatural and I can't put it into words. . . . Look at the works, see the results. In 1944 I traveled through Italy without making any arrangements. With no money. There were no trains. No regular bus routes. I never arrived late at a single lecture. That can't be coincidence for a whole year. It's Jesus that does it."

"God Wills It." Jesuit Father Lombardi believes that the Jesus who came to earth at the decline of Roman civilization, and again manifested Himself in Saint Francis at the close of the Dark Ages, is about to come again to the troubled and despairing world. To prepare the way, Father Lombardi this month is launching his biggest undertaking--a "crusade" which he calls fronte dell'amore (the front of love). Love is his rallying cry and his bridge between the spiritual and the political worlds: "Men and women, arise! A new age approaches. . . . You were born to see the age of Christian solidarity when wealth will be voluntarily and freely bent to the common good without the need of violence but through love. . . . Dieu le veult."*

Love, rather than violence, must produce a new economic order, says Father Lombardi, but he gives little comfort to the rich. When Prince Ludovico Chigi-Albani, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta,/- learned of the little Jesuit's effectiveness against the Communists, he offered to finance his tours. Replied Father Lombardi, who always travels penniless: "Do not think that priests will ever again die as they did in the French Revolution, merely in defense of the rich man's privilege. I shall untiringly preach the limitation of your wealth, both as a man and as an order. The wealthy, I'm sorry, will have much to suffer. It's hard to part with one's goods. But if the wealthy overcome the temptation of their wealth, they will find a bright fire leaping up in their breasts and they shall know happiness. . . . There is much good in Communism which must be embraced voluntarily. . . ."

What brings the Communists to hear him? "They feel that I understand and sympathize with their social problems. I tell them ... that their aspirations are worthy of satisfaction and can only be satisfied through Jesus' spirit."

Next week, Father Lombardi's "front-of-love crusade" begins in Milan, where he and two other priests will deliver a series of seven lectures at three different churches. The first four of the series will deal with the Love of God, the last three with the commandment: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." In Milan is a district called Sesto San Giovanni, the citadel of Italian Communism; party members call it "our Italian Stalingrad" and boast that it has a contingent of 30,000 armed men. Here Father Lombardi will give his first lecture.

*Deus vult (God wills it) was the rallying cry of the First Crusade, 1095-1101 A.D. /-An order of the Roman Catholic Church originally formed in the 12th Century to care for pilgrims in Jerusalem.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.