Cardinal Zuppi: “We change the world”

We republish this interview with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi published in 2022 and that our readers have greatly appreciated

Matteo Zuppi could be one of those priests in the rounds of the photographs of Mario Giacomelli. High, thin, fast movements, the black tunic that flutters while he hurries to ask: “What do we have the academic quarter of an hour?”. Because there is always someone who has to meet, see, listen. And you could exchange it for any “Don Matteo”, if it were not one of the key characters of the church of Pope Francis – for just over two months he has been the president of the CEI, for two and a half years cardinal, as a seven archbishop of Bologna, where he lives happy, loving the city and having remedied it. Every day he says put to San Petronio, because he has chosen not to make private celebrations. He does not use social media (apart from WhatsApp) because “it’s not my way”, but “I know they made a Facebook page where they take me good -naturedly for the bottoms”. The page, from six thousand followers, is called “Zuppi who does things” and has the verse to the press, which since she became bishop, in 2012, enhances it anything. \

Do you like the definition: “A street priest who becomes president of the CEI”?

«No, because it is a trivialization and, as such, always
dangerous. It’s all much more complex ».

Then let’s start from the beginning. Numerous family, his.

«We were five brothers and each one different from the other. We have only one sister, a very tender vice-moamma being the second, the lieutenant of the “general” … ».

His mother?

“And of course! By force! Fumagalli, Brianzola, from Seveso, had the art of the command. With ease, I think, he managed to manage us ».

Are you still united today?

«We have very profound relationships even if not continuous, moreover the meaning of being brothers is not only in the attendance. We never really managed to quarrel, even when there was the division of the things of the “general”, when she died. Moreover he had given wise instructions in the will. “

Which?

“” Remember that when we got married we had nothing: all this is the result of your father’s work and the help of your mother “. Post scriptum: “See only between brothers, without husbands and various wives” ».

His brothers have all got married, does his grandchildren have?

“Yes, certainly. We have everything: married, divorced … the “general” did not want what he called “the concubines” did not want at home, but there were natali who were a little sad, with my brothers who came disappeared. In the end we proposed a amnesty ».

Remember when he told the “general” that he wanted to make himself a priest?

«That one of the children made the priest was, on the one hand, of happiness, on the other, of great concern: I was not of the traditional type. I remember that at my first mass, at 26, all my relatives in Santa came
Maria Maggiore. But I, after the Mass and the best wishes for the ordination, ran away and went to Primavalle ».

“I ran away”?

“Yes, because maybe I would have had to be more with them, but for a certain radicality of the time I did not give much: I was in a hurry to go to the suburbs, to celebrate the” second first Mass “in a chapel in a basement”.

Why did he enter the seminary only after graduation?

«I always tell myself that I made three seminars, being a little zuccone. The first was at home. Mom and dad were very believers, he linked to a committed labor experience. His degree thesis, for example, was on the first scouts, a movement that, in the 1930s, had a different way of approaching the boys, who fell perfectly with the vision of the “general”: we work and was notted time. At our house at a certain hour the rosary was said: and it is not that we children were happy to stop playing to recite it ».

Second seminar?

“The community of Sant’Egidio, where I trained and met the Gospel inherited at home, but alive, like prayer together with my peers, in high school. Then there was the third seminary, in the strict sense. “

Was it the beginning of the 70s, what boy was he?

“I started high school on October 1, 1968. At the time, as for extra -parliamentary groups, adhesion, involvement in a community were very strong things. It was a moment of research, we had to change the world, being young had a precise sense and responsibility. “

Are you still in contact with your high school companions?

“Yes, see you once again a year. And it is interesting, because every time there is an immediate confidence, there is no reverence, it is good, it is a reality of reality. Now they are all retired, some fixed with the grandchildren ».

Have you never thought of putting on a family?

“I would say yes, because I had the example of the marriage of mom and dad, while my generation was the one in which there were already many difficulties in families. However, I wanted a bigger family, the idea of ​​the community was that. Without that group, perhaps I would not have become a priest ».

With Sant’Egidio in 1992 he was a mediator for peace in Mozambique. Is peace in Ukraine away?

«Peace is never taken for granted. But everyone can and have to do their part because the only way to resolve conflicts is to work to remove division, hatred, prejudice, ignorance that are land for the culture of violence, because they justify it. Only dialogue can neutralize hatred. We hope that the wires of dialogue that led to the agreement on wheat will grow and that the UN can open other meeting spaces ».

In the last ten years he has become bishop, archbishop and cardinal created by Pope Francis. Do you remember his first meeting with him?

“It was many years ago for the presentation of a book in Buenos Aires, where he apologized a lot because he arrived slightly late because of the” subte “, the subway!”.

What strikes her of the Holy Father?

«Immediance. Look in the eyes, listen, it has a surprising “emotional” memory, that is, it recalls what conveys feeling. He gets touched by what he listens ».

Mario Draghi, whose government has fallen, has not yet been able to meet. It also blocked it ius scholaeon which the CEI had said to be in favor.

«There are certain issues of national interest. The fundamental rights of people and therefore duties are at stake. The solutions are found with awareness and open gaze to the future, not marked by prejudice and fear. Citizenship to children who have attended the classes of our schools allows to tie them to our country, make them “ours”, offer the pride of being Italian and perhaps rediscovering it too. The ius scholae It represents a step to get out of the emergency and welfare approach and begin – medium delay forty years – to face the migratory phenomenon in a structural way ».

The election campaign withdraws these themes out. What does he answer to those who say: “Take the migrant at home”?

«That does not know the welcome that is typical of Italy. In the countryside it is said: “We are ten, it scores two others that we are in twelve”. Solidarity is something that is part of our true tradition ».

We vote on September 25: who is a son of ’68 what would you say to young people, to convince them to vote?

«For Paul VI politics is the highest form of charity. For many, and above all for young people, however, the word has taken on a negative connotation, which refers to power games, personal interests, corruption. But disillusionment and anger can lead to believing that the screamed, easy, at any price solutions are real. The world must be changed and do it not only is beautiful but it is essential, as well as possible. I will be an incurable “boy”, now old, but I have not lost this dream. And he reappears every time I listen to the Gospel and with the feelings of Jesus I look at the world and the many suffering of the little ones. How do you leave them like this? ».

Speaking of suffering, for the first time in history, his CEI has started an independent survey on pedophilia within the Church in the last 20 years.

“It’s one of the many things we are doing. We want the facts to emerge and be examined with scientific criteria ».

Revolutionary has also been defined as its opening towards the LGBTQ+community, and towards all families not “regular” for the Church, that Istat tells us more and more numerous: de facto couples with or without children, enlarged families, civil unions.

«Mine is not a position different from that of the Church, which is that of accompanying and welcoming already indicated by Benedict XVI, and who reiterated Pope Francis more explicitly. As the Gospel tells, Jesus lets himself be approached by a “sinner” and does not judge it. On closer inspection he only gets angry with the religious or those who take advantage of God, while he goes to the home of publicists and sinners. He freed us from all prejudices … and we don’t? ».

The CEI, however, expressed a position contrary to the DDL Zan. Many homosexual and Catholic people wonder how far they are welcomed by the Church.

“The welcome does not have a deadline or a time, until” straight lines “. If you are a son, you are son. If you are brother, you are brother, this is always your home. Then I can not agree, I can be in order at all. Inside the church of the DDL Zan it was discussed very much. For example: is surrogate motherhood a problem? Yes, it’s a problem. But if you ask me to baptize a child born so I answer you: of course! I do it. I did it ».

The funeral was denied to Welby. If a person died with assisted suicide, would you celebrate the funeral?

“Yes. However, I must clarify a point: the Church does not admit euthanasia, but asks for the application of palliative care. It remains until the last next to the beloved, doing everything to remove the suffering of the body and the spirit, therefore without provision, but always defending the dignity of the person. Complexity requires intelligence, mercy and love to understand the events of life ».

Why did he say: “Are we all repeated in love”?

“Kill! Look at me! And then it becomes angry of returning, when love for itself and at all the one for others is practiced too much. We really never stop learning it, love, we never understand that it transforms and has tremendous force. One of the most tender things are the holidays for the fiftieth of marriage. How much, powerful, very human love, very different from that of the beginning, is a distillate of it, less mixed with something else. And then we are repeating because we are a little toned: there is sin, the result of the evil that trivializes, makes it umpteenth, flows love ».

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