Dear brothers,

The two General Superiors of the Order of Mother of and the Order of the Pious Schools meet at least twice a year (May and November) in the Conventus Semestralis of the Union of the General Superiors (UGS). Every time we greet each other very familiarly and int the spirit of fraternity to revive and remember the historical and providential meeting of our two religious families. The last time was from 28 to 30 may 2014. In that meeting, we have mutually sought to exchange the embrace on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the union which took place on January 14, 1614, with the Brief of Paul V Inter pastoralis officii, and which lasted three years. On that occasion we fixed an appointment for July 12 in order to reflect together, and more calmly, about our way together in a short four- times-Centennial history, but with eyes of astonishment of those who know how to see God as the Author of everything.

We want to thank him for the abundant fruits that we have collected between the two Orders and that fill our hands.

Together we have decided, albeit only in an initial phase, to organize three activities: a message by the General Fathers to the Brothers of the two Orders for the feast of Saint on August 25; a small Committee which will collect more calmly the documents in the archives on the whole question and will give us a more scientific history of the union at a Congress or in papers; to share together the Eucharist on the solemnity of Saint Giovanni Leonardi in , on October, 9, giving thanks to God for the gifts received by our two religious Orders throughout our history.

As we said before, it is only a few early attempts. And it would be very useful offering both of us some ideas or doing something in our Provinces or Delegations. The next three years will serve us to remember the time we have lived together from 1614 to 1617, to make active memory and bring us more closely each other to understand what is the path that the Lord invites us to go as families who want to look at their founders for the good of humankind.

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The Message: a premise

Going to the message, which has been the subject of our reflection, we want immediately put aside any disqualification or discomfort on "the ephemeral union with the Luccans" or the contrast then released with some reluctance on both sides. The historian of the Order of the Mother of God, Fr. Erra Carlantonio in its Ragguaglio della unione delle Scuole Pie con la Congregazione della Madre di Dio, published in Rome in 1753, in a well done text added at the conclusion the "Risposte alle considerazione del P. Talenti, scritore delle Scuole Pie” (father Vincenzo Talenti 1695-1770) and the protests that Fr. Federico Sarteschi addressed him in the book De Scriptoris Congregationis Matris Dei, in 1753. The controversies are obviously rhetorical and do not leave space to the truth and to God's Providence that wanted us together, nor leave it to the history of the sanctity of our two founders, saint Giovanni Leonardi and saint Joseph Calasanz. The corollary of that holiness was the of that ‘trait d’union’ between the two, which has been the perfect paradigm of this human and divine story: blessed Pietro Casani. And we want to reread that period precisely from this story of oliness, taking into account the verse of the Gospel that says: "Because there is no good tree yielding bad fruit and, conversely, there is no bad tree yielding good fruit. Each tree is known by its fruit. Figs are not collected from thorns, or grapes from the bush. The good man out of the good store of his heart gives good things; and the evil man, out of his evil store, gives evil". (Lk 6: 43-45).

We, in our fraternal meeting, have experienced the three good fruits produced by the tree of the union, from which we have spiritually fed ith Evangelical taste, and now we propose them to you.

THE FIRST FRUIT: the friendship between the two founders

More than a fruit, we would say that the meeting of the two protagonists of the history of the Church in the 16th century has been like a flowering in

2 the spring of the spirit. Saint Joseph Calasanz speaks of the astonishment caused him by the meeting with Saint Giovanni Leonardi: "I undersigned hereby acknowledge having met et having particular familiarity with father Giovanni Leonardi of holy memory, which mysteriously was the founder of a so-called Congregation of Our Lady of Corteorlandini in the city of Lucca... It seems to me that the father could not do this feat without being illuminated by God, especially being a man of a certain age and a different experience. But I'm sure that he had in very high esteem the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity, having started an enterprise so hard and with so much opposition, not only by individuals, but also by the Republic of Lucca". (Saint Joseph Calasanz, ms. preserved in the Archives of OMD, Arm A, p. mz 10). This friendship was intimate and profound. In its brief information for the process of beatification of his friend, he said a noteworthy phrase: "About particular miracles I cannot inform with the same certainty that some others can give, but I think that all his life is a great miracle". (ib.)

And what his friend Leonardi thought of saint Joseph Calasanz is referred to us by Lady Laura Gaetani della Riccia: "Fr. Giovanni Leonardi was my confessor, founder of the Religion of Saint Mary in Portico, before I went to confess with Fr. José, who was a great Saint and a . He told us great things about his virtues". (Bau, BAC, p. 238)

Fr. Joseph Calasanz told us that the work of Saint Giovanni Leonardi was very useful for the Pious Schools, before even the unification: "And as a man endowed with great prudence, his Holiness Pope Clement VIII used him and, in particular, I remember that he chose him to appease some differences and claims which were among some secular men and the teachers of the Pious Schools. It was very useful, in that occasion, for the work of the Pious Schools". It refers to the conflict between Calasanz and external groups of guilds that supported the claim of the benefactors above the work. The complaints came to Pope Clement VIII, who recommended to Giovanni Leonardi to pacify the subjects who felt wronged, avoiding unfortunate consequences to the Pious Schools. Fr. G. Santha in "Saint Joseph Calasanz. Pedagogical work", puts in evidence the fruit of this friendship, and puts it like this: "In addition to the facts and the aforementioned reasons, may have influenced in Calasanz the knowledge that he had of a book of his great friend Giovanni Leonardi on youth

3 education, namely: ‘Trattato della buona educazione dei figlioli, la quale si manifesti con l’autorità della Divina Scrittura, dei Sacri Concili, dei Padri e degli Scrittori gentili, con vive ragiono et esempi’”.

The friendship between our founding Saints brings to memory the alliance founding of our being, a way to access to what man is. Friendship is the most powerful sacrament, the sacrament of every moment that we can receive up to the end. To talk about the friendship between our two saints means talking about the encounter between "souls". It's a feeling that overcomes the objective difficulty, the drama of the forced separation that we have experienced afterwards.

This friendship that God offers us in the two saints, we can also live it among us. Christ brings us together in a single communion, the Fellowship of the Church. And these separations that are obfuscating the image of the Church! We should do everything we can to make it more obvious that the Church is a place of friendship for all!

We have the courage to make friends, in particular, with the poorest. Attention to the most abandoned has immense value in our societies where many people live isolated and feel misunderstood.

THE SECOND FRUIT: Discerning both charisms

So, what is charism?

The charism is a gift of the Father, that the Spirit communicates to a person or a group of people so in the Church may live (to be present and active) a specific aspect of the mystery and the ministry of the Word, to strengthen the Church, in synergy with all the other charisms, so that "better make present Christ", i.e. to make him more easily known and to more effectively reveal his work in the world.

In this brief definition of the word “charism” the starting point is the love of the Father and the point of arrival is "the world", i.e. a person or a specific group of people, with their specific history and culture. But this must not be understood in a static and one-sense way! This movement of the Father's love -that in the Spirit empowers the Church, Body of Christ,

4 that she might seek the Kingdom and his righteousness- is in response to a "cry" of this world, although this cry is not always addressed to God. Therefore, the charisms are always a response to specific human situations. In other words: to the call that God speaks to us in the Spirit corresponds a call that the “world” addresses us. So each charism contains in itself and requires a dual attention and a dual fidelity: to God who in the Spirit reveals and communicates a particular moment of the mystery and ministry of Christ (mystical-spiritual dimension of the charism) and towards the human group that is the subject of that cry, of that call (apostolic- ministerial dimension of the charism). These two moments are inseparable and rather require the ability to live them synergistically, i.e. leaving the contemplation of the fontal love of the Father help us perceive more clearly the cry of humanity, and going closer to the conditions of this group of people and sharing their conditions enables us to better understand the heart of God who sends us. Infidelity to one of those two moments means to remove power and relevance to the charism we have received.

In 1614 the Leonardians and the did not escape this common condition of all Christians, although it has human and spiritual greatness: by the breadth of their vision and their heart and the zeal they felt towards their apostolate, they would have liked certainly embrace the mystery of God and respond to the needs of the poorest and most abandoned. However, they also had to focus on a specific time of the mystery and put themselves at the service of a specific group of people. In the gradual insight of this option the spirit helps and accompanies them; before through the human spiritual guides, and through the "signs of the time" (although this term was not used at that time), and then in the extraordinary communication of a foundational charism.

Along with San Giovanni Leonardi, the first understood that the “world” was the Church that had to be reformed according to the spirit of Christ "measure of all things". Find the courage for leaning towards the Church, still complaining about the evils of the time, with a timely therapy: Eucharist, sacrament of reconciliation, catechesis, and filial love to the Virgin. From the union and disunion with the Piarists, the Leonardians have understood the option to become mature priests and this option becomes concrete in following this path. The evangelical fertility of their

5 decision immediately finds echo in the pastoral intelligence that flows from their work.

With Saint José Calasanz, the Piarists have understood that the "world" asks Christian popular education through education, with three charismatic traits that are present from the very beginning: giving priority to training from the earliest childhood, educating the poor and evangelizing (piety and letters - spirit and letters). Calasanz receives these traits primarily as acceptance of a new mission of educational evangelization in which participated the first companions. The charism manifested itself gradually, and was definitively approved by the Church as an educational Christian mission aimed at children and young people and embodied by the Order of the Pious Schools.

Like all human things, also the path together, that is sign of the mystery and the presence of Christ, can be lived in a reductive way. Where this happens, the human criterion prevails over the novelty that Christ introduces into the relations between men. It would be a bit as saying: "we are together, since Someone has put us together, then our 'duty' is to live our lives as a common expression". The root of this degeneration is the lack of knowledge of the true nature of the charity, event of the gratuity of the love of Christ for us and of our response. For this failure, a friendship reduced to a moral duty has a brief history and almost always leads to violence: the Christian company is not generated by itself, it is not born just as the fruit of an ascetic effort that I do, but it is a gift, a grace in its origin and lives as a memory of this grace.

Today, with the ecclesiology of communion that Vatican II has given us and which we have deepened in the past years, we are faced with a new context in which the consecrated life creates dynamics able to include various vocations in the Church in a being and acting that converge. According to some theologians, these vocations are presenting as a new moment of ecclesial maturity and we must replace the charisms in that dynamic.

THE THIRD FRUIT: Pietro Casani’s beatification.

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If the union of our two religious families was to disappear as it can occur with the divorce of a sterile couple, we should say, much to our regret, that we have failed. However, if this union has sprung the sanctity of Pietro Casani, we could proudly say: Blessed be God who always leads us along the path of Holiness!

The year 1614 opened for Casani as a new experience. The holiness that had appeared with saint Giovanni Leonardi in the long years of his tenure at the Institute, was consolidating in the social and religious revolution in order to free the poor boys of ignorance and the dangers of the street. As Cesare Franciotti says: "his vocation was miraculously guided" by its improvised manifestation in a young man with bright ideas, with uncommon intelligence, and constituted a radical option. The experience next to Fr. Leonardi in the apostolic visits to the monasteries of Montevergine (1596) and Vallombrosa (1601) offered him the opportunity to delve into the various aspects of the religious life and to make him mostly appreciate the need for a strong coherence between the abandonment of the world and the new religious reality.

This deep conviction was the basis for the decision to move from the Luccan Congregation to the Pious Schools, at the end of the experience of the triennium 1614-1617. Fr. Erra Carlo Antonio states it by saying: "Fr. Casani did not left by any disappointment, but by the desire to live that extreme poverty and hardness introduced from the beginning in the Pious Schools". And with the adjective 'poor' he wanted to decorate well his name, always signing his letters "Pietro poor".

His great achievement was to have known, appreciated and shared the great intuition of St. Joseph Calasanz. Pietro Casani not only did understand its very essence in its evangelically revolutionary scope, but he became fascinated by it, and in the name of the Lord embarked on the new way of education, with the force of his 45 years. A huge work of functional- organizational type that he played according to the requirements of the Rules and Constitutions, bearing in mind also the frequent and detailed indications of Calasanz, who were always oriented to human promotion and evangelization.

We want to conclude with a great letter that Fr. Pietro Casani directed to the fathers of Santa María Corteorlandini of Lucca on the occasion of

7 obtaining both Congregations the category of religious Order of solemn vows in the same meeting of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars (31.8.1621), although the Congregation of Lucca obtained the official Brief dated September 3, and the Pauline on November 18 of the same year 1621.

Those are the same feelings that inhabit us and we have toward all of you in this time of our life.

"The great joy that dwells in my heart can't shut up any more, and I break loudly that long silence, which I have kept for so many months ago I saved with you because I had nothing to write and because of the many occupations involving the care of this vineyard of Narni. However, much- loved father, the mercy of God came to that happy time, 23 years I've been in that holy and blessed group... now is the time in which loudly I can say.( …) Enjoys and enjoy, happy plant, quam plantavit Pater coelestis, widens as you like to the many and happy borders a mare usque ad mari (...). Begging together for Him to look at the minimum work of God, where I am, as his daughter and his servant (...). I think that not without a particular mystery O.L. God and his great blessed Mother have wanted that on the same day and in the same Congregation both have been approved, i.e. the mother and the daughter, as these fathers and brothers told when the news reached this House of Narni, for centuries of centuries. Amen. Amen. God make you a Saint". (Letters of father Casani, Rome 1995, pp.85-88)

Rome, August 25, 2014

Solemnity of saint Joseph Calasanz

The General Rector The Superior General

Clerics Regular of the Mother of God Clerics Regular Poor of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools

Fr. Francesco Petrillo Fr. Pedro Aguado Cuesta

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