Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St Charles Borromeo At the Service of the Church More than thirty years ago, Fr Massimo Camisasca began his vocational journey in a seminary in Bergamo. Today, the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St Charles Borromeo has priests present in fourteen countries. A conversation with Fr Paolo Sottopietra edited by Luca Doninelli What circumstances gave rise to the idea of the St Charles Fraternity? Everything began a long time ago, and it’s tied up with Fr Massimo Camisasca’s personal history and vocation. While at the university, in dialogue with Fr Giussani, he made a decision to enter a priestly community. He first took interest in the Dominicans, but was disappointed. Then, in 1972, he applied to enter the Venegono Seminary, but was rejected. This gives us an idea of the tensions that accompanied the growth of the Movement of CL in the Diocese of Milan at that time. He was subsequently accepted by a missionary community led by the Bishop of Bergamo, who had the aim of serving other Italian dioceses with shortages of clergy. In this community, called “del Paradiso,” named for the street where it was located, he was ordained a priest in 1975. We could say that the Fraternity of St Charles was conceived there, in the friendship between Fr Massimo and some of his fellow-seminarians and priests, sent to Bergamo by Fr Giussani with him and after him. In that group of friends, the idea matured of starting something new that could serve the Movement and the Church as a missionary institute. So was the direction in which this service was moving already clear from that time? The desire to live together so as to support each other on the common vocational road, to offer ourselves for the mission throughout the world, and the desire for a priesthood educated and exercised according to Fr Giussani’s charism: these were the values that were to remain basic in the future St Charles Fraternity. Still today, these are our three basic pillars, as the name suggests–Priestly, Missionary, Fraternity. Then the seminary was born… In 1984, Fr Giussani and Fr Massimo judged that the time was ripe. With six companions who had followed him from Bergamo, Fr Massimo founded a priestly association in Rome, and in its name a seminary was immediately opened in via Liberiana 21. It was September 14, 1985; almost twenty years ago. Four years later, this association was recognized as an Institute of Diocesan Right by Cardinal Poletti, the Vicar of Rome. Then, in 1999, it was recognized as an Institute of Pontifical Right by John Paul II. How would you describe the charism that moves the St Charles Fraternity? In other words, how would you describe the relationship between the experience of the Fraternity of CL and your Institute? Our charism is that of the Movement of CL. All the members of our Fraternity have met the Movement, belong to it, and have matured their vocation within it. A young man who asks to join our seminary wants to do this because it is first and foremost a proposal of education and formation to the priesthood in continuity with the experience he has already had in his community of origin, normally a university community. After our priestly ordination and our missionary appointment, we take part like everyone else in the life of the local community of the Movement, to which we want to belong and in which we want to be continually nourished. Each one of us wants to serve the Church with that style of presence among men (Fr Giussani would say, that “temperament”) that attracted us and won us over. Fr Massimo often reminds us that we are sent to speak to everyone with the accent that we have learned from Fr Giussani. In fact, through the tasks the bishops give us in their dioceses, the charism we bear can make fertile and renew the most varied ambits. The charism has something to say to everyone, to the whole Church and the whole world–we work so that this may be realized. As regards the juridical relationship with the Fraternity of CL, according to the statutes wanted by Fr Giussani, since we have houses and missionaries present on all the continents, we take part as ex-officio members in the Fraternity’s international diaconia. What is meant by the reference to St Charles Borromeo? Those who know us know that our principal patron is St Joseph, and all our houses are entrusted particularly to him. St Charles is just the name of our Fraternity. The reference to the great sixteenth-century Archbishop of Milan is actually also linked to Fr Massimo’s personal history, before the foundation of the Fraternity. He often spent time on Lake Maggiore, where his family has lived since the Second World War, and so was very familiar with the estate belonging to the Borromeo family there; then, he was ordained priest on St Charles’ feast day, November 4th. In St Charles Borromeo, we have learned to admire that love for Christ which made of him the great reformer of Catholicism in Lombardy, and elsewhere, in the difficult years that followed the Council of Trent. St Charles accepted firstly to reform his own life. From this radical conversion of his life was born an extraordinary passion for people, his realism, the capacity of looking at people and of being a point of reference for the Christian people. Our choice of him as a patron is a sign of our desire that he obtain from God the gift for us of this total entrustment to Him. The Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo was born in September 1985, in the heart of Communion and Liberation, as a priestly association. Encouraged by Fr Giussani, the young priests who gave life to this Fraternity desired to support each other in the vocation and ideally respond to the invitation of John Paul II to go forth to all the world, expressed to the Movement on the occasion of the audience for the thirty years of CL (September 29, 1984). From this call was born a missionary Fraternity, which was recognized in 1989 as a Society of Apostolic Life by Cardinal Ugo Poletti. “ Fraternity” and “mission” are the guiding words of this young community: serving men in the availability to go wherever the needs of the Church and the life of the Movement request the presence of priests, bringing throughout the world the experience of CL “through a priestly missionary energy,” in the words of its founder, Fr Massimo Camisasca. The Saint Charles Fraternity is present in 14 countries, in addition to Italy. The main activities of its priests involve life in the parishes entrusted to them, and teaching in schools and universities.