Audience with His Holiness Benedict XVI on the occasion of the XXV Anniversary of the Pontifical Recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.

Saturday, March 24, 2007. St. Peter's Square, Rome.

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you here today, in St Peter's Square on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the pontifical recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. [Perhaps we expected the sun, but even water is a sign of grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.] I address my cordial greetings to each one of you, particularly to the Prelates, the priests and the leaders here present. In a special way I greet Father Julián Carrón, President of your Fraternity, and I thank him for the beautiful and profound words addressed to me on behalf of all of you.

My first thought goes [ obviously] to your founder Monsignor Luigi Giussani, to whom so many memories bind me, and who had become a true friend to me. Our last meeting, as Msgr. Carrón mentioned, took place in Milan Cathedral two years ago, when our beloved Pope John Paul II sent me to preside at his solemn funeral. Through him the Holy Spirit aroused in the Church a movement, yours, that would witness the beauty of being Christians in an era in which the opinion was spreading that Christianity was something tiresome and oppressive to live. Father Giussani at that time set himself to reawaken in the youth the love for Christ “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” repeating that only He is the road toward the fulfillment of the deepest desires of man's heart, and that Christ saves us not despite our humanity, but through it. As I recalled in the homily at his funeral, this courageous priest, who grew up in a home poor in bread but rich in music, as he himself liked to say, from the very beginning was touched, or rather wounded, by the desire for beauty, and not any kind of beauty. He was searching for Beauty itself, the infinite Beauty that he found in Christ. How can we not recall Father Giussani's many meetings and contacts with my venerated predecessor John Paul II? On an anniversary dear to you, the Pope once again confirmed that the original pedagogical innovation of Communion and Liberation lies in re-proposing in a fascinating way, in tune with contemporary culture, the Christian event, perceived as the source of new values and capable of orienting all of existence.

The event that changed the life of the Founder also “wounded” the lives of a great many of his spiritual children, and gave rise to the many religious and ecclesial experiences that form the history of your vast and articulated spiritual family. Communion and Liberation is a communitarian experience of faith, born in the Church not from a will to organize of the Hierarchy, but originating from a renewed encounter with Christ and thus, we can say, from an impulse that derives ultimately from the Holy Spirit. It still offers itself today as an opportunity to live the Christian faith in a profound and up-to-date way, on one hand with a total fidelity and communion with the Successor of Peter and with the Pastors who ensure the government of the Church, and on the other hand with a spontaneity and a freedom that permit new and prophetic apostolic and missionary endeavors.

Dear friends, your movement thus inserts itself in that vast flourishing of associations, movements and new ecclesial realities providentially aroused in the Church by the Holy Spirit after the Second Vatican Council. Each gift of the Spirit finds itself in its origin and necessarily at the service of the building up of the Body of Christ, offering a witness of the immense charity of God for the life of each man. The reality of the ecclesial Movements is therefore a sign of the fecundity of the Spirit of the Lord, so that the victory of the risen Christ be manifested in the world, and the missionary mandate entrusted to the whole Church be carried out. In the message to the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements, May 27, 1998, the Servant of God John Paul II repeated that in the Church there is no contrast or opposition between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension, of which the Movements are a meaningful expression, because both are co-essential to the divine constitution of the People of God. In the Church even the essential institutions are charismatic, and, on the other hand, the charisms, in one way or another, have to institutionalize themselves in order to have cohesion and continuity. Thus both dimensions, originated by the same Holy Spirit for the same Body of Christ contribute to make present the Mystery and the salvific work of Christ in the world. This explains the attention with which the Pope and the Pastors look at the wealth of the charismatic gifts in the present day. In this regard, during a recent meeting with the clergy and parish priests of Rome, recalling St. Paul's invitation in the First Letter to the Thessalonians not to extinguish the charisms, I said that if the Lord gives us new gifts we ought to be grateful, even if at times they are awkward. At the same time, since the Church is one, if the movements are really gifts of the Holy Spirit, they must naturally insert themselves into the community of the Church and serve it, so that in patient dialogue with the Pastors they can constitute constructive elements for the Church of today and tomorrow.

Dear brothers and sisters, on another very meaningful occasion for you, the late John Paul II entrusted you with this mandate, "Go out into the whole world to bring the truth, the beauty and the peace that are met in the encounter with Christ the redeemer." Father Giussani made those words the program of the whole Movement, and for Communion and Liberation it was the start of a missionary period that took you to 80 countries. Today I invite you to continue on this path with a deep, personalized faith, solidly rooted in the living Body of Christ, the Church which guarantees Jesus' presence with us in this moment. Let us conclude this meeting by directing our thought to Our Lady, with the recitation of the Angelus. Father Giussani nurtured a great devotion to her, nourished by the invocation Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam, and by the recitation of Dante Alighieri's Hymn to the Virgin, that you repeated earlier this morning. May the Holy Virgin accompany you and help you to generously pronounce your “yes” to the will of God in every circumstance. You can count, dear friends, on my constant remembrance in prayer, while with affection I bless all of you here present and your entire spiritual family.

[Translation by ZENIT]