The house in Budapest

Experience
of visible communion
Cardinal Erdö’s esteem for the experience of the CL Movement led to the opening of a house of the St. Charles Fraternity in Hungary

by Marco Ruffini

A boat in the ocean. With these words we could summarize the presence of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo in Budapest, Hungary. A small boat making its first moves in the immense ocean of lack of faith that affects not only the country of the Magyars, but–as Benedict XVI has often explained–the whole continent of Europe, unable to understand what it means to be Christian, to have faith, to believe.
It is a small boat with two young priests on board, Fr. Mario Toma, 35, from the province of Venice, the responsible of the “house” in Hungary (the word “house” is the term used for the missions where the priests of the St. Charles Fraternity are sent into the world to bring the Gospel message according to the charism of Communion and Liberation), and Fr. Alessandro Caprioli, from Milan.
They were called to Budapest two years ago, at the request of the Archbishop of the capital, Cardinal Peter Erdö. After coming to know some Hungarian members of the CL Movement living in Budapest, he wanted some missionaries of the St. Charles Fraternity to be present in the diocese. The Cardinal has a lot of trust in the help of movements and new ecclesial realities.
Fr. Alessandro also teaches Social Doctrine of the Church, in English, in the city’s Catholic University, and works in two university chaplaincies in the city center. Fr. Mario is mainly occupied helping a Hungarian priest in his parish.
“I came to Budapest a year after Fr. Alessandro,” Fr. Mario explains. “When I got here, Fr. Massimo appointed me head of the house! So I devote myself to that, to studying the language, and to helping the priest in the parish where the Cardinal asked me to go. There, once a week, after long hours of preparation, I am able to preach a homily in Hungarian. Upon my arrival, the most wonderful thing was the welcome of the small CL community. They took me to a room where they meet for School of Community and held a party in my honor, the sign of a small people that was waiting for me.”
It is truly a small people, in a country wounded by fifty years of totalitarianism, first under the Nazis, then the Communists, and, more recently, the “invasion” of capitalism. Very few people attend the churches in the city, and for many the faith is intimistic and often risks being formal. “Unfortunately,” Fr. Alessandro says, “it is not enough to take care of the Liturgy (this is a good thing); people need to be met, listened to, and offered companionship.”
People are used to living substantially alone, isolated, not knowing what a life of faith lived together is. The two priests are trying to propose a communitarian Christian life. Fr. Mario explains, “We are trying to live the Church we have met thanks to the Movement, a Church that hopes in Jesus Christ and that is founded on a lived communion. We are trying to live communion amongst us, so that it may be an experience visible and possible for everyone. We take every occasion for meeting people, youngsters, whoever we come across on the way. We seek people out one by one.”
For a few months, Fr. Mario and Fr. Alessandro have been holding a course in the Catholic University in which they meet for a few hours a week with a group of students who would like to study Italian. “We have proposed, as the basis for a dialogue in class, the reading of Fr. Giussani’s book, Il senso di Dio e l’uomo moderno. The majority of students are Catholics. By reading and commenting on the book, we discovered that their faith is a remembrance linked to practices of the past, unable to become an everyday experience. Yet, many of them let themselves be provoked by the words in Fr. Giussani’s book and have sensed that the faith can be lived in a way they had never thought of until that moment.” Over the past year, three students have come close to the Movement and have asked to receive the sacraments.
The life of the two St. Charles Fraternity priests in Budapest is followed constantly by Cardinal Erdö. Aware of the crisis of faith that the whole of Europe and the West is going through, he is fighting against this and does not give up. He has launched a year of prayer for the Church in Hungary and he holds an hour of Eucharistic Adoration every week in the parish where Fr. Mario works as a curate, to ask for the gift of new priestly vocations. He has promoted Fr. Giussani’s book, The Risk of Education, and invites people to read it. (The Hungarian edition was published recently.) Along with other archbishops of European capitals, he has begun an important city mission in Budapest, with the aim of bringing the faith to the whole diocese, reaching even those farthest away. He is aware that the problem of the Church is a problem of educating the people, and to this he dedicates himself continually. The outcome of this work is in the hands of God and in the freedom of those who entrust themselves to Him.

Dear Fr. Massimo: Since I am unable to participate as I would have liked in the priestly ordination of Fr. Marco, Fr. Aldo, Fr. Giovanni, Fr. Carlo, Fr. Jonah, Fr. Domenico, Fr. Marco, Fr. Mario, and the diaconal ordination of Andrea, Michiel and Federico, I beg you to give them my greetings and all my gratitude for consigning their lives to Christ in the form of priesthood and deaconate, confirming in their belonging to the Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo their readiness to bring to the world the charism of Fr. Giussani, living in the Movement of Communion and Liberation.
Their “Yes” to Christ renews the enthusiasm for our own, and introduces us to a more conscious responsibility of our common work of bringing, through our lives, the echo of that Beauty that has fascinated us and goes on fascinating us to our fellow men, and the concrete signs of that hope which quicken our steps on the journey together towards Destiny.
I entrust to Our Lady and St. Joseph the beginning of the priestly and diaconal mission of the newly ordained and I express to you my joy and gratitude and that of the whole Movement for your work as educator and for your friendship with which you share the great adventure begun by Fr. Giussani.
Fr. Julián Carrón
Milan, June 24, 2006