Moscow  Fr. Paolo Pezzi

On the Way in Russia:
a Renewed Obedience
One of the first seminarians of the St. Charles Fraternity had been appointed Archbishop of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow

by Massimo Camisasca*

When a boy you admitted to the seminary becomes a bishop, many reflections come to mind. This happened on September 21st, when I got the news that Fr. Paolo Pezzi, one of the first seminarians to enter the St. Charles Fraternity, a month after its constitution in October 1985, had been appointed Archbishop of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow. I will try to go back over those thoughts with you in this article, which I want to dedicate entirely to this event. The first thing that came to my mind was the close bond there was between Fr. Giussani and Fr. Pezzi. Whenever Fr. Giussani met me, he always spoke of him. I know that he searched for him by telephone even in Siberia. Fr. Giussani admired Pezzi’s simplicity, obedience, and balance. He saw in him a child completely abandoned in his mother’s arms.

A zigzag journey
Then I remembered the journey we made together over these 22 years, with him as my personal secretary and as the Secretary General of our Fraternity. Then his immediate and spontaneous acceptance when I asked him if he would like to go to Novosibirsk to head our house there. In the years spent in Siberia, Pezzi was an important help for Bishop Joseph Werth, the first Catholic of that immense region. (One could say that this new stage of the Catholic Church began with him.) Then I called him to Rome as my vicar and finally, in 2003, I felt the need to open a house in Moscow, so that our presence in Russian be not limited to Siberia. And Pezzi was ready to go off again, to be once more the founder of a new experience. Last year, the four Catholic bishops of Russia appointed him Rector of the inter-diocesan seminary in St. Petersburg. It is an apparently zigzag journey that in reality is very linear.

Many fruits
It always required only a renewed obedience. Pezzi did not content himself just with going to Russia. He learned the language of that people, identified with its culture and with its history, and, above all through contact with very many people, he always tried to enter the soul of the Russian people and fell in love with it. Now I am happy that, through his person, the St. Charles Fraternity and the Movement can put themselves even more concretely at the service of the Russian people. What could have seemed a dream of Fr. Giussani produced many concrete fruits, of which we are not the owners. No one knows the future. In the end, the only thing that is truly useful and truly intelligent, the only thing that gives peace, is to be servants of Christ in the present, in the time given us, with our whole selves. This decision of the Pope, expressed in the appointment of Fr. Paolo, calls us to collaborate in the desire of the whole Church for a more visible unity between East and West, between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, until we will be able to participate once more united, as in the past, in the same Eucharist. When I go to Moscow in a few weeks’ time for his consecration, I will take with me the entreaties, the prayers, and the expectations of so many who know him and will go on supporting him with their friendship in this new page of a thrilling adventure.

* Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries
of St. Charles Borromeo