(October 19, 2009) St. Giovanni Leonardi made the light of Christ shine in difficult
times, Pope Benedict XVI said in a message read on Sunday at a Mass to mark the 400th
anniversary of the founder's death. The Mass of Mission Sunday in St. Peter's Basilica
was celebrated by Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization
of Peoples. St. Giovanni Leonardi founded the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God.
He is also the patron of pharmacists. The papal message was addressed to Father Francesco
Petrillo, rector general of the order. “St. Giovanni Leonardi shines in the firmament
of the saints like a beacon of generous fidelity to Christ,” the Pontiff wrote, according
to a Vatican Radio report. The message noted that in a society that was “convulsed”
like that at the turn of the 17th century, the saint “struggled so that the light
of Christ would shine again among his contemporaries and they would feel the warmth
of God’s merciful love.” Cardinal Dias repeated this point in his homily, saying
that Leonardi, “with his luminous life, brought God back to men.” “His whole life,”
the prelate said, “has the seal of the uncontainable and untiring love for the glory
of Christ. His missionary zeal was not merely geographic […] but had to be capable
of transforming every gesture, every effort, every bit of time and energy into something
missionary, and for one single and supreme interest: Christ and Christ crucified.”
St. Giovanni Leonardi, the cardinal said as the Church marks today's World Mission
Sunday, wanted an entirely missionary Church, intimately directed toward man. At
the close of his customary Sunday recitation of the Angelus, the Pope greeted the
Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, who had come for the celebrations of the 400th
anniversary of St. Giovanni Leonardi’s death, along with the students of the Colleges
of the Propaganda Fidei and representatives of pharmacists, who have the saint as
their patron, calling on them “to follow him on the path of holiness and to imitate
his missionary zeal.”