Riflessioni ad alta voce

The Pope at the time of Don Orione Just before Don Orione was born two episodes took place which would eventually influence his way of thinking. Until 1860 the Pope was also the political leader of a state called “State of the Church”, which had Rome as capital and covered the central part of Italy. In 1860 the Italian army conquered Rome and annexed it and all its territory to the kingdom of Italy. The Pope became a sort of prisoner and remained only the spiritual leader of Christians with no political powers. The Italian government at that time was very much anti-christian and against the Church. In 1869 there was the Vatican I Ecumenical Council in which the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope was declared. Infallibility means that whenever the Pope would declare something in matters of faith or moral, and it does it officially as Vicar of Christ, we can be sure that what he says is true and mistake is not possible. These two episodes created a big division among people...

The vow of fidelity to the Pope What is a forth vow? All the religious congregations must have the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. These are called evangelical counsels because they are based on the life of Christ and his teaching. Each congregation has developed an answer to a particular call of the Holy Spirit, which is called “Charism”. Each charism is different from the others and makes the congregations different one from the other. Through history some congregations decided to have a fourth vow in order to stress the peculiarity of their spirituality. From the very beginning don Orione had a clear idea of doing something special for the Pope and for the Church, and in a few occasions he expressed the desire of having a forth vow. Unfortunately, at that time the Church did not allow any new forth vow, so Don Orione died without seeing his wish fulfilled. Our forth vow was introduced for the first time in the constitutions prepared by the general chap...