Every new fruit that is born in God's great garden, which is the history of the Church, is born absolutely gratuitously. It would be a mistake to claim to be able to measure its reality only using the reasons drawn from today's history. In truth, as is true for every man, the profound reasons for which God wants a new community will only be revealed in its future history. But it is equally reasonable to try to answer the question: why a new reality? What can it tell us? What can it offer to the great concert of the Church? We thus discover that every new birth represents, according to proportions which He decides, a response from Christ Himself to the particular historical conditions which mankind is progressively living.
No one can deny that today, more than ever, it is necessary to rediscover the pertinence of the event of faith to human life. If the Christian people have lived centuries in which faith has been alive-to the point of determining the course of history-or centuries of being taken for granted or forgotten, we today live in a time in which this people seems to be attacked by two great alternatives, as though caught in a pair of pliers. The first is that of a fundamentalism which wants to affirm faith by denying reason, ending up by destroying man's and God's possibilities. Man's, because he thirsts and yearns for a response to the rational question about the meaning of life and reality; God's, because man is innately repulsed by an image of God that imposes itself by extinguishing the questions proposed by his reason.
At the most recent Fraternity Retreat, Father Giussani acutely fathomed this dynamic: "Faith is rational, since it flourishes at the extreme boundary of the dynamics of reason like a flower of grace to which man adheres with his freedom." (Luigi Giussani, Exercises of the Fraternity. The Miracle of a Change, Milan 1998, p. 30)

The universalism of power
The other attack which profoundly strikes the life of the Christian people, as a radical alternative, has universal dimensions. It consists precisely in the universalism of power, of an empire seemingly without a capital and in the last analysis without visible leaders, but which in reality profoundly determines the life of men and of individuals, creating areas of wealth and hunger, peace and war, life and death. This is especially visible in the capillary penetration and influence of the mass media and networks of information and technology which tend, whenever they are not used truly for man, to significantly reduce the experience of freedom.
I want to give an example. Whoever today is involved in proclaiming Christ and the Christian truths must come to terms with the enormous difficulty encountered in speaking with people: it is as though suddenly, in a very short span of time-twenty or thirty years-the same words, used yesterday and today, no longer mean the same thing, they no longer contain an experience that is anywhere near what they might have contained thirty years ago. And this is the sign of the penetration of power. In his recent book-length interview, Il sale della terra [The Salt of the Earth], Cardinal Ratzinger observes that the danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and whoever does not accept this is isolated and marginalized. The consequence is that the context in which we find ourselves is marked by a corrosion of the texture of people who create a city, a nation, and that is true-in a fundamental way-also of the Church. Quite correctly, many editorialists note today's crisis of the democracies. This is a radical crisis, because democracy is born from the idea of a responsibility that is expressed by persons who are aware that they are the voice of a people. Today, instead, the pyramid has been turned upside down: at the top are occult world oligarchies. Ratzinger concludes his analysis in this way: "A possible future anti-Christian dictatorship will presumably be much more subtle than those we have known to date. It will show itself as apparently open to religion, but on the condition that its model of behavior and thought not be affected." (Joseph Ratzinger, Il sale della terra, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo, 1997, p. 176)

A provocation for man
I wanted to preface my description of the countenance and basic concerns of the St. Charles Fraternity with this albeit schematic and summary presentation of the scenario underlying our times, because I am convinced that only from a real awareness of the historical, precise task which God has entrusted to his Church can a response come forth to the question I asked at the beginning: What can we bring to the great history of God's people? Why did the Holy Spirit want this Fraternity?
The only answer, the most profound that I am able to give, is this: He wanted it-just as He wanted the Movement from which it was born, just as He wanted so many new communities that make up the engaging face of the Church-so that the people be, so that the Christian people continue to be, in today's social and cultural conditions, a provocation for man.
I believe that the Church must nourish within itself the awareness that an epoch of martyrdom could be lying in wait for her, an epoch of exclusion or of reduction. That's why at this moment in history, the Spirit gives His Church the gift of the movements. The Pope reminded us of this, in St. Peter's Square last May, addressing all the movements gathered there to hear him: "They are, you are, this providential response." (John Paul II, May 30, 1998)
Comforted by these words, which were very moving for all of us, I look at the gift of this community of ours as a small grain of sand on the beach of history, on the immense beach which God promised to Abraham.

To Father Giussani
Moved, along with my brothers, by the words you wrote us, which are a profound synthesis of your great heart and your great Christian understanding of the world and of history, with you I live this day as a spectator and an amazed actor in the story you began and have brought forward ad multos annos still among us.
Father Massimo and your friends
in the St. Charles Fraternity
Rome, March 19, 1999

An Environment of Grace.
For the Salvation of the World
Passages from the homily delivered by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State of His Holiness John Paul II, during the holy Mass of thanksgiving for the papal recognition of the Priestly Fraternity of Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo in Rome, March 20, 1999
In this solemn occasion my wish is that the Priestly Fraternity be always an ambit of grace, as was the home of Martha and Mary, sanctified by the presence of Christ, witness of an immense love for the Lord, like that of Mary who poured perfume on Jesus' feet, drying them with her hair. A love that is total and generous, that arouses the anger of some disciples, too much determined by calculation (Mt. 26:8). May this ardent love for Christ be always the secret of your life. The pressing appeal addressed by Christ to his disciples at the Last Supper, "Remain in my love," "Manete in dilectione mea" (Jn.15:9), is addressed to all of us. This personal and profound love for Christ is the secret of the lives of the saints and the mysterious strength that sustained the martyrs. Let it be so for all of us today, remembering the event of Paul the Apostle, "Were I to speak in the tongues of men and angels, and lack love, I am like a booming gong or a clashing cymbal." (1Cor. 13:1) Today, too, in the conflicts of life a profound love for Christ will multiply our strength for being faithful to our vocation because love, as we read in the Song of Songs, is as strong as death. (Song 8:6)

A new institution
Dear friends, not only are you committed to follow Christ personally, but you have wished to enter a society of apostolic life, in other words in one of the many marvelous expressions of the missionary vitality of Christ's Church, constantly enlivened by his Holy Spirit. It is a work that springs from the prosperous trunk of the tree of Communion and Liberation brought forth in the holy Church of God by our dear and venerable Msgr. Giussani, to whom goes out in this moment our fraternal greeting and our deepest thanks. As distinct from those who enter a monastic order or a religious congregation, you are inserted in that line characteristic of Institutes, who see in the apostolate the pivot of our life (CJC no. 731-746), differing therefore from religious congregations which have as their characteristic both common life and the public profession of the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. The Pontifical Annual for 1999 speaks of the existence of 30 societies of apostolic life recognized by the Holy See and already enjoying pontifical right. From the Oratorians of St. Philip Neri to the Lazarists of St. Vincent de Paul, the Sulpicians, the Pallotines, the Missionary Society of the White Fathers, and that of Maryknoll, to the Sodality of Christian Life recently born in Peru. To this apostolic chain a precious link is now joined: that of your Fraternity.
In the last chapter of the Apocalypse the Apostle John describes the Holy City of God, presenting it to us as a spring of life for the whole of humanity, as the Angel of the Lord showed it to him. The text of Chapter 22 of the Apocalypse reads, "He showed me a river of living water, clear as crystal, that came out from the throne of God and from the Lamb. In the middle of the city square and on both sides of the river there is a tree of life that has twelve fruits and produces every month, the leaves of the tree serve as medicine for the nations." (Ap. 22:1-2)
My wish for your Society of apostolic life, having now reached its full maturity, is that it may draw always from the Lord this torrent of grace and pour it out on the world. My wish is also that your Fraternity be that tree of life that the Apostle John saw raised up in the heart of the world. May your tree produce fruit twelve times a year, like the famous tree of the Apocalypse! May its leaves be a medicine for the nations!
Like every ecclesial reality, your Fraternity will thus give its contribution for the salvation of the world.

The Papal Recognition Decree
The "Priestly Fraternity of Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo," founded by Rev. Msgr. Massimo Camisasca, with General Headquarters in the diocese of Rome, was raised to a Society of apostolic life of diocesan right on March 19, 1989. The Fraternity's aim is evangelization and education to the faith through the exercise of the priestly ministry, especially in those environments and countries where the de-Christianization of society and the Church's need of a new evangelization and a new implantatio Ecclesiae are most manifest.
As the Fraternity is well developed and spread throughout numerous dioceses, His Eminence Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of His Holiness for the diocese of Rome, sustained also by letters of commendation from the other diocesan bishops concerned, requested that the "Priestly Fraternity of Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo" be recognized as a Society of apostolic life of pontifical right.
His Holiness Pope John Paul II, having obtained the favorable opinion of the Congregation for Institutes of consecrated life and Societies of apostolic life, deigned to give his assent to the above-mentioned plea.
Therefore, this same Congregation, with the present Decree, declares that the "Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo" is a Society of apostolic life of pontifical right and establishes that it be recognized as such by all.
Vatican, March 19, 1999
Eduardo Cardinal Martinez Somalo, Prefect
Piergiorgio Silvano Nesti, C.P., Secretary