1. Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, and founder of the international Catholic movement Comunione e Liberazione.
16 Facts About Luigi Giussani
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Luigi Giussani was born on 15 October 1922 in Desio, near Milan, Italy.
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Luigi Giussani's father, Beniamino Giussani, was an artist and anarchist.
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Luigi Giussani's mother, Angelina Gelosa, worked in a textile factory and was a devout Catholic.
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Luigi Giussani was ordained to the priesthood on 26 May 1945 at the young age of 22.
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Luigi Giussani's ordination had been accelerated by the authorities in the Milan archdiocese as they feared that his serious respiratory health problems would lead to his death before becoming a priest.
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Luigi Giussani was driven by a desire to bring the Christian experience to the school environment in response to the questions of young people living in a context that he perceived to be increasingly hostile to both the Christian faith and the Catholic Church.
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Luigi Giussani perceived a need to help young people to discover that real faith was relevant to one's life.
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Luigi Giussani's premise was that Faith is not just doctrines and moral laws, but an event; that Christ is the centre of everything; and that one comes to know Christ in the community of the Church.
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In 1964 Luigi Giussani began teaching introductory theology at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a position he occupied until 1990.
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Under the new name Comunione e Liberazione, the movement Luigi Giussani founded attracted university students and adults in addition to high school students.
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Luigi Giussani outlined his views on politics in an address to an assembly of the Italian Christian Democratic party at Assago on 6 February 1987.
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Luigi Giussani emphasised that Christianity began as a relationship with a particular individual, Jesus of Nazareth, and that the morals and theology of the Church are an outgrowth of this relationship.
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Luigi Giussani believed that one of the central problems for faith in the modern world is that it has been subject to various reductions.
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Luigi Giussani taught that the principal goal of a Christian life is to grow in maturity in the relationship with God.
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Luigi Giussani died on 22 February 2005 at the age of eighty-three.