"You cannot love without getting your hands dirty. But above all you cannot love without sharing". These words condense the extraordinary life of Fr. Luigi Di Liegro, born on 16 October 1928 and died on 12 October 1997. Head of the Pastoral Office of the Vicariate of Rome, first director of the Diocesan Caritas, he is still remembered today as "the priest of the last", for having dedicated his life entirely to the defense of the poor, of the excluded, the marginalized, of any origin. "The greatest sacrament is human relationship", he wrote. Denouncing the risks of a society devoted to exclusivity and therefore exclusion . “Solidarity arises from the analysis of social complexity, from the degradation caused by the law of the strongest, from the lack of collective ethics”. Guided by a very high sense of civic participation and the political dimension: “A city in which a single man suffers less is a better city”. Almost thirty years after his passing, Fr. Luigi's thoughts and work represent a light for all those who work for the defense and promotion of human dignity.
“Father Luigi Di Liegro offered and asked everyone to share. His tireless work as a builder of solidarity remains an invaluable asset for Rome and for Italy" (Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic).
Luigi Di Liegro was born in Gaeta on 16 October, the youngest of eight children. His father Cosmo had attempted to emigrate to America several times, always rejected as an illegal immigrant. When at the age of ten Luigi expressed his intention to go to the Seminary, Cosmo initially opposed it. However Luigi is welcomed at the Sanctuary of Divine Love in Rome. His vocation is supported in particular by his older sister Maria, Sister of Divine Love, an authentic human and spiritual guide for Luigi until his priestly ordination and for all the years of his pastoral ministry.
On 4 April he was ordained a priest and appointed deputy parish priest of S. Leone Magno al Prenestino.
Fr. Luigi takes part in a training course in Belgium, proposed by the J.O.C. (Youth Christian Workers), on the themes of the pastoral care of work. he visits the mines where many Italian emigrants work and learns to share their journeys and sufferings.
He was called to the Vicariate by Card. Clemente Micarato work on a new structure of the Diocese, more in line with the broad social transformations affecting the city.
In collaboration with the Center for Social Studies of the Gregorian University, he created the first "Sociological investigation into the religiosity of Christians in Rome". The initiative highlights the worrying gap between a faith still declared by the vast majority of Romans and the concrete choices on an ethical and social level that the citizens themselves declared they were making. This divergence will be, according to Fr. Luigi himself, among the inspiring reasons for the conference of February 1974.
Fr. Luigi is called by the Card. Angelo Dell'Acqua to give life to the "Pastoral Center for the animation of the Christian community and socio-charitable services ", of which he became Director. He will hold this position until the end of his life. In this framework it is essential to also understand the true meaning that Caritas had in its thoughts and actions. From this office he completes the new territorial structure of the diocese, which is the current one. he brings together the parishes into five large "sectors", which are in turn divided into "prefectures", which he tries to make coincide with the boundaries of the constituencies. It should be remembered that since the 1960s Don Luigi had worked to ensure that parish communities were places of education for participation, in line with the indications that emerged from the Second Vatican Council.
The famous conference on the evils of Rome opens on February 12, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, entitled: The responsibility of Christians in the face of expectations of justice and charity in the diocese of Rome. Fr. Luigi, appointed by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, is its coordinator and soul. The conference brings to light the weaknesses and shortcomings of the capital, denouncing responsibilities and marking a turning point in the relationship between the Church and the city's institutions.
At the end of the seventies Don Luigi chose to become shepherd of the nascent community of Centro Giano, a small village near Ostia, of which he would be the point of reference until the end of his life. He is animated by a double conviction: that a priest is not a priest without a community and that it is essential to read reality with the gaze of those who live on its outskirts.
In November the Diocesan Caritas of Rome was born, directed by him until the end of his life. He practices "a charity that tends to free people from need and therefore make them protagonists of their own lives". It is therefore not enough to limit ourselves to emergency interventions. Instead, it is necessary to develop innovative welfare models, supported by intense research activity which he considers essential. The innovative and far-sighted nature of the services he created still makes it an essential cornerstone of the city's social network today. listening centers , clinics , centers for the collection and distribution of medicines , canteens and a hostel which today bears his name. The poor, according to Fr. Luigi, is not just a Christian issue. Since it is not a question of charity but of rights, the issue must involve the institutions, which he never stops urging.
"The fundamental truth of Christianity is that Jesus Christ was born among us, in human history, in human life, in order to be able to liberate it. The love of God came, so to speak, to "dirty its hands" in our life and in our history. This we firmly believe and this we express with the works which are a manifestation and consequence of faith. Works are needed because without them faith becomes only deepening and this is not enough to achieve that fullness that is expressed in service. Life is saved because we put ourselves at the service of others. This is the great testimony that we can and must give: we are the living witnesses that God has put himself at the service of men .
Works without faith and faith without works are both incomplete, because by separating them, works become mere activism and faith becomes sterile".
Discernment is this question: Lord, where are you? It means starting from certain particular situations that people experience, that communities experience, situations that reveal the presence of evil and the presence of good. This would be enough to understand what discernment is: a commitment to go deep, to enter into the depths of people. It is this intimacy of the Spirit that we can and must try to reach, to grasp what He suggests to us when we find ourselves faced with certain truly pulsating, dramatic, desperate situations. In situations like these, it is not by bringing medicines, or food, or paying a bill to those who don't have the money to do so that we have solved people's problems, even if we cannot ignore these needs nor can we say: look, I I am only interested in spiritual things. We must continue to do everything that charity suggests we do, judging through discernment, without making too much separation between the spiritual and the material.
Discernment should lead us to make contact with these realities of suffering to ask ourselves what they are, how they manifest, and where. It's not enough to know these realities numerically and generally: we're talking about living people, so we must personalize them, identify them, and empathize with every single experienced situation, without limiting ourselves to abstract words of comfort. Here, then, is our fundamental question: how, through my lifestyle, can I feel involved in the various dramatic sufferings of humanity, those we discover within us, in our city, outside our city? These are not theoretical issues but real facts and situations: migrations, the mentally ill, the handicapped, drug addicts, the terminally ill, in short, all those spaces where human suffering is most alive and which God, by becoming incarnate, takes upon himself to free us from despair and give meaning to pain.
Discernment does not enter into theories but into facts, into personal lives, and into events. It represents a new way of thinking, a new way of interpreting events. It requires the methodology of listening. Not just listening to others, but listening to God in others. So, the real issue is not about determining whether the poor person is telling the truth or not: the real issue is rather helping the poor to become aware of God. And I do not mean a purely spiritual truth: God became less spiritual when He became incarnate. God is the person who is in front of me. Thus, through discernment, we should come into contact with this truth to help people become aware not of us, not of the Church, but of the mystery that is already within each of them.
