STORY OF A BETRAYED LOVE THAT HAS NEVER EXTENDED: LUIGI NEGRI IS DEAD, HE WAS BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF SAN MARINO-MONTEFELTRO AND THEN ARCHBISHOP OF FERRARA. A BISHOP DISASTER BUT AUTHENTIC BELIEVER AND MAN OF FAITH

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In these mournful circumstances the clerical hypocrisy of the ecclesiastics always manages to give the best of itself, followed by that of the lay clerics which far surpasses it. Like this, enveloped for a few days by the sense of insane respect for death which, according to some, would cancel everything, we proceed with the beatification of the deceased, first of all magnifying the virtues he did not have.

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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Rome, 1° May 2010, sacristy of Santa Prisca on the Aventine, Luigi Negri, Bishop of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro, shortly before the priestly consecration of Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

The 31 December 2021 Luigi Negri died, who was bishop of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro (2005-2012), later Archbishop of Ferrara (2013-2017). Complex and contradictory personality, with an impulsive and passionate character that created many problems for him, to those who were close to him and to the two dioceses he governed.

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In these mournful circumstances the clerical hypocrisy of the ecclesiastics always manages to give the best of himself, followed by that of the lay clerics which far surpasses it. Like this, enveloped for a few days by the sense of insane respect for death which, according to some, would cancel everything, we proceed with the beatification of the deceased, first of all magnifying the virtues he did not have.

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I got to know Luigi Negri very well, because of his passion and imprudence, which have often generated poor pastoral governance, I have experienced them on my skin and, in a sense, I will pay them throughout my priestly life, while not having any personal fault or responsibility, neither I nor my current Bishop, who in perfect antithesis to Luigi Negri is a pastor in the care of souls to such a caring and loving point that he will leave an indelible memory of himself for many decades to follow.

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As can sometimes happen with some fathers, instead of an inheritance, Luigi Negri left me debts to be paid to unintended creditors that were not contracted by me, ended up in the unfortunate condition of having to extinguish them and therefore pay all the consequences. This was Luigi Negri for me, My confreres of the particular Church of San Marino-Montefeltro are well aware of this, none of whom seem to have ever wondered why, in my Diocese of belonging, in 12 years of priesthood I have never celebrated Holy Mass even once, nor have I ever attended the Chrism Mass, or at the assembly of the clergy. Having said that, I clarify: I won't either, at least until the day I am presented with those apologies that I owed me from the first to the last. Not for me, but for the sacred respect due to the priestly ministry, because if the first not to respect the priesthood are bishops and priests, it certainly cannot be complained that the sacred priestly ministry is not respected by the faithful. And these are due excuses, especially on the part of this Holy Church so pleasant and politically correct that even the last of the Tunisian ex-convicts who land clandestine on our shores to end up peddling drugs on the streets of Italian cities is pining, but who believes that he can treat presbyters in such a barbaric way that the proven evidence of the facts never gave rise to problems of a moral nature, doctrinal and asset. E, given the times that exist, it is appropriate to say - without aura of presumption - that a presbyter like me should be taken as an example of priestly life, until proved otherwise not easy. And whoever proves otherwise had it, that he flies it to the four winds on the public square.

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It is from this that, by apparent paradox, my troubles derive all from the imprudence and lack of care of Luigi Negri. Indeed, not only does the contrary proof of what I have just stated does not exist, because there is worse: I have no skeletons in the closets, therefore I cannot be blackmailed morally and economically. And today, if a priest cannot be blackmailed, it cannot even be entangled in certain dioceses which establish their strange balances on the mechanism of blackmail, that under the test of facts we are paying with our increasingly empty churches and with a crisis of credibility in which the clergy were not even in the 11th century, at the time when San Pier Damiani wrote his Free Gomorrhianus. We are priests, with our inadequacies and laziness, with our quiet life and with our doctrinal and moral deficiencies, that we have emptied them, not the Covid-19 pandemic.

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To understand the great heart of Luigi Negri's father and pastor I will narrate a scene of my priestly consecration, which took place in Rome in the Church of Santa Prisca all Aventino on 1 May 2010. Since the previous month, I begged the bishop to be able to talk to him for half an hour before the sacred ordination. On the evening of 30 April arrived in Rome at 21,30 at the international priestly house where I was staying, he greeted me and asked to withdraw. At which I accompanied him to the room reserved for him, all in the space of five minutes. Before closing the door in my face he said: "See you tomorrow morning after breakfast". All 8 the next morning I served him breakfast, but without being able to talk to him, because there were all the other priests of the house. Then he withdrew telling me: "See you at 9.30". All 10 his companion calls me and announces me: "The bishop told me to tell you that you will see each other directly at the church". Five minutes before 11 comes to the church, welcomed at the door by the rector, by me and by the acolytes of the Almo Collegio Capranica who served in the liturgy, while 92 concelebrants and four assistant deacons were already waiting for him in the sacristy. Time to parade and we leave in procession, without having exchanged even two words between us.

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After the proclamation of the Holy Gospel he gave a homily in which he even highlighted the virtues that I didn't even know I had, only at that moment did I take note, I must also say with great happiness, precisely because I was completely ignorant of them. The concelebrants - which I repeat were 92 presbyters from various parts of the world - were impressed and talked to each other for days:

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"It rarely happens that a bishop says similar words about one of his presbyters demonstrating a will so determined to ordain him with profound episcopal pride".

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The solemn pontifical ended, while in the sacristy I received the hugs of numerous confreres, the Bishop disappears. Later I was told a scene that unfortunately remained in the annals: my brother Paolo, with her baby by the hand, at the time 5 year old, he ran to the Bishop's car to greet him, because Luigi Negri was leaving without even deigning to greet my mother and my brother.

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Perhaps the Holy Father was waiting for him in a private audience? No, he had an appointment with the senator of Forza Italia Marcello Pera, a socio-political scientist passed off as a great philosopher, one of Luigi Negri's various friends, to which three months later, when I had the opportunity to see him for scarcely five minutes, complaining about his behavior I said:

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"If an inveterate sinner who has not confessed for thirty years has a regurgitation of conscience, or if a dying person needs to be comforted with the Sacraments, send us Marcello Pera, or, she knows I'm telling her: send us Silvio Berlusconi directly, thus the eternal salvation of the soul will be guaranteed one hundred percent ".

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Temperamentally more touchy than a monkey, the consequence was that for a year he didn't even answer the phone. I could go on with many other stories, before which the novel Heart, well-known tearjerking work written by Edmondo De Amicis in 1886, compared to certain sad and painful episodes I experienced, it would be more entertaining than a hilarious comedy-theatrical show staged at the Brancaccio Theater by the great and late Gigi Proietti.

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Christ God really wanted me to be his priest at all costs, because immediately after my sacred ordination I was put in conditions that were not only unsustainable, but in conditions that exceeded the human endurance capacity, as two of my trainers admitted, one of whom is a bishop of long experience. For much less, priests have been seen abandoning the priesthood on the spot after a couple of years, even after a year, or even after only six months. That I have a very strong character is recognized by everyone, but not even a strong character is sufficient in certain situations. This is where I saw the bursting action of God's grace on me, because she and she alone supported me, I have no merit. And if I have merit, I have it, it is only one: to have freely accepted the working and transforming grace of God. Only today I understand the reasons that yesterday I could not understand, these: for years now, as a confessor and spiritual director, I carry out a delicate and intense pastoral work in support of priests who are in serious difficulties. How can one understand the pain of the cross without having carried it on one's shoulders and then having been nailed to it? Yup, it took years, but I finally understood my role in the economy of salvation, who had to pass through my cross in order to play the role of one who helps to carry the cross to others, instead of saying, with the style of new generation migrationist bishops: "Maybe you need the help of a good psychologist". No, villains who are nothing else! A priest in trouble, always and strictly speaking he needs another priest capable of supporting him, as well as a bishop worthy of the name, but today more and more difficult to find, they are so busy crying on the boats of illegal immigrants or on the ideological poor. Or maybe someone knows other ways, to the present, to become bishops and then remain on their own episcopal chair, if not the pandering flattery and the demeaning and depersonalizing homologation to certain current pastoral trends as devastating as they are bankruptcy on which, albeit aware of the enormous damage, no one breathes and to which all are homologated?

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With all due respect to the laudators post mortem and of the cielline supporters who for a few days will be unleashed narrating endless wonders about the great Luigi Negri pupil of the first hour of the great Luigi Giussani, I can and must say, with all the most realistic and unfortunately merciless spirit of truth, that as a bishop it was a disaster. Because this is the underlying problem: Luigi Negri was not really meant to be made a bishop. You don't catapult a man, a 64 years of age, from a chair of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan to the episcopal chair of one of the smallest rural dioceses in Italy, all scattered among the uninhabited plains and mountains of Montefeltro. But, when this happened by mistake, Luigi Negri could have seized the opportunity to sanctify himself and sanctify his clergy and the People of God entrusted to him, because not infrequently Divine Grace also makes use of errors, to insert us on the way to holiness. Instead, not even two years passed, Luigi Negri was already pawing between the Congregation for Bishops and the members of the college of cardinals to give him a diocese at his height, possibly one of those that were also residential cardinals. On the other hand, it was the minimum due, for a bishop who has reached over sixty years of age totally lacking in concrete pastoral experiences and who immediately proved unable to govern a small diocese, left to the whims and free will of the vicar general, while he was spinning like a top from one part of Italy to the other to hold conferences and meetings. Let me be clear: for a presbyter, have had pastoral experience, to the point of being suitable for the episcopate, it certainly does not mean having spent your life in politics between the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan and the Lay Movement of Communion and Liberation. Pastoral care for a priest is quite another thing, especially for a bishop. Indeed, when the government of the Diocese of San Marino Montefeltro passed from Luigi Negri to that holy man of God by Andrea Turazzi - who for forty years was the parish priest and the trainer of priests - from the dense darkness it passed into the light of the sun that shines in the sky at noon.

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When a bishop is an ambitious career who does not feel at ease in a diocese, soon the clergy and the faithful feel this. The consequence will be the distrust and disaffection of the clergy and faithful towards the bishop.

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To talk about the two great virtues of Luigi Negri, bad bishop and bad pastor in the care of souls, you have to paint the reality of a man who has spent his life sneaking in every way and every way in politics, his great and irrepressible passion, without ever having understood or ever wanted to understand that a bishop must be a caring father to both those on the Right and those on the Left, avoiding creating, as usual he did, useless controversies that have always revealed his being a biased man, rather than above the parties. The task of a bishop is to announce the Holy Gospel, do not campaign, always avoiding using the Holy Gospel for political ends, propaganda and above all electoral. I said just now that to talk about the virtues of this complex and contradictory personality, one must start from its serious defects. The year was 2011 When, now the dream of the bishopric of Milan has vanished - which the good Luigi Negri believed he was entitled to -, by now he was certain that he was moving to Venice in the place of Angelo Scola, promoted to the Ambrosian See. It was then that I took him to the chest and told him:

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“Your Excellency has taught me much more with your faults than with your virtues. She gave me a lesson that will accompany me throughout my priestly life, this: if the Devil manages to catch us in vanity and ambition, he can literally do with us what he wants, first of all by taking away our freedom, consequently conditioning our behaviors. She was entrusted with a Church to love and care for, who is his bride. Therefore try to be a faithful husband, she who speaks to the right and left of the great family values, which are not just mere political values ​​useful for staging polemics with the post-communist or liberal Left, but they are basic Christian values. So you don't aspire to have a richer and more senior wife, as do those husbands who leave their wives and children to run away with another woman, because he sees, maybe she doesn't realize it, but betrayal and adultery have many faces, and even bishops can be traitors and adulterers ".

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Since then to follow, in practice I have not heard from it again e, when I sometimes got to meet him, I barely had time to kiss his hand and offer him a greeting. but yet, among the various priests he consecrated during his episcopate, not a few of whom have said terrible things about him - except to magnify on the occasion of his death the extraordinary virtues they had never noticed before -, I believe I was the most faithful and truthful of all. Several times I told him to his face that he was about to make serious mistakes, just as many I reproached him for being wrong, even severely. And after having told him this, I have always obeyed him, I have been faithful to him and paid for his mistakes, above all I have always defended him in front of priests and chatty bishops who, behind his back, teased him for his immoderate career ambitions, which with almost childlike naivety he could not even conceal, why Luigi Negri, what he wanted, he said it publicly, as the bishopric of Milan, which he believed to belong to him almost by right. One time, misunderstanding the classic monsignorino poisonous of the Vicariate of Rome, in a very severe and angry way I intimated him:

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"Never again allow yourself to be ironic about my bishop and disrespect him in front of me, that I am one of his presbyters, because you run the serious risk of me breaking even some bones ".

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The hell that this gray employed placed in the command rooms he created me, it turned out terrible, suffice it to say that for two years it was possible for me to celebrate Holy Mass only in the Catacombs of Priscilla, while an army of alcohol-addicted priests, some even on drugs, many to a turbulent nightlife of immoral debauchery, they celebrated quietly in the main Roman parishes. But I'm an "old school" priest, therefore the bishop does not touch himself, because regardless of its merits or demerits, he is the one who holds and unites together all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Indeed, as I have often said and explained, especially in our age where everything hinges on emotional passions, on "I like" or "I don't like", the bishop is sacred, was also the worst episcope of the entire universal Church. To an unworthy bishop or not up to his role, I could also say that I have no respect for him, However, I would never question its legitimate authority, nor would I ever disrespect his sacred person. Because I solemnly promised the bishop filial respect and devoted obedience. The non-Stim, I didn't promise that. Therefore, if he wants it, must earn it, because it is not due to him. While respect and obedience do, that is due to him, always, regardless of its merits or demerits.

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To Luigi Negri, my consecrating bishop, I revered it, respected, obeyed and at the opportune moment defended with drawn sword. Estimate no, I didn't estimate it, I also told him, but he never cared about that. He was interested in the esteem of the various Marcello Pera, of Gianni Letta and of the elders of the Center Right to follow more or less in business with the political consortiums of Communion and Liberation. Then, that the most Catholic of these had at least two divorces behind him and that at the age of sixty he was living with a girlfriend of twenty-five, it was not of interest to this indomitable defender of the family's supreme political values. This is the reason why a consistent and faithful priest had no value for Luigi Negri, for him who built his irrepressible political being on the inconsistency and the obvious spirit of contradiction, seriously damaging his pastoral being.

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I am Christianly proud of having been consecrated a priest by him, I have always told everyone and today I repeat it. Pride that is based on the objective existence of two great virtues that Luigi Negri was gifted with, as I told Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in one of our many private talks:

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«Luigi Negri is a castle of contradictions and inconsistencies, a man who proved himself not up to the pastoral role of a bishop, but he is a true believer and a man of faith. And I will always be proud of having been ordained a priest by a believer and a man of faith. Something that is not at all obvious these days, be consecrated priests by bishops who are believers and men of faith ".

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What Cardinal Carlo Caffarra replied to me I'll take it to my grave with me, I can only say that his were words of response given by the sensitive heart of a great and true shepherd.

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I loved Luigi Negri in truth, I loved it by accepting it with all the complex baggage of its defects, many of which derive from evident unconscious complexes of inferiority that conditioned his entire existence. And I am sure that in his heart he has always admired in me the respect for truth and consistency, aware that if I had accepted certain compromises and closed my eyes on so many sad events that are affecting the Church, today my ecclesiastical status would be quite different, But, like many of my career brothers, I would have paid for a purple or red robe at the price of the eternal damnation of my soul, I would not have sanctified myself and I could not have sanctified the believers of Christ. And when one day, just after having ordained me a deacon, taking my inevitable ecclesiastical career for granted Luigi Negri told me:

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“You will remember me, when I will be an old bishop emeritus forgotten by everyone and you will be in who knows what high roles within the Church?».

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Making him laugh in his face, as is often done to those who have not understood anything about people, or at least very little, answered:

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“I will always be a priest held on the fringes, because if I have to choose between the uncomfortable truth, my peace and my personal gain, I will always choose the truth, which has very high prices to pay, although it is true that Jesus Christ died on the cross ".

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That first of May 2010, in his homily for my priestly consecration, Luigi Negri said:

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«… The joy abounds in me today to give the Church a priest faithful to the truth, to sound doctrine and truly ready to give his life for the Church and for the Papacy up to the ultimate sacrifice ".

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A bishop who says things like that, how can he not even stop to talk for half an hour with the ordinand before the sacred ordination and how can he escape five minutes later, as a perfect and rough peasant - this Luigi Negri in fact was - without even saying goodbye to his family, incidentally, they gave me free to the Church, within which I have always paid for everything and at full price, without costing my Diocese a single cent during all the years of my formation for the priesthood, carried out in Rome at a high price, at full price and at full price? How can a bishop say these words and then abandon one of his presbyters to feed the beasts and be totally disinterested in him? Simple answer: because at that moment it was not Luigi Negri who spoke but the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth and because I, priest, I was consecrated by Christ, who used that bishop's hands and mouth, which was only and nothing more than an instrument.

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I salute you, my beloved and venerated Bishop, you can count on a presbyter who will always celebrate Holy Masses for you, that from your light purgatory you will surely be grateful to me. Contrary to those who have thrown everything and more on you, in shovelfuls of mud, murmuring like little women between the private lounges and the closed sacristies, but that at your funeral they will narrate wonders about you such as to make the virtues of the Holy Bishops and Fathers of the Church pale, in the head of all those bishops who have mocked you for years of sitting in the living room with poisonous jokes like: "If they don't make him a cardinal, poor Negri will die depressed ".

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If there are no impediments due to the strict restrictions for Covid-19 which limits gatherings to a minimum, I will also attend the funeral. I will sit between the benches with the faithful, if there is room, otherwise I will remain praying outside the door of the Church. Because coherent I am lived and coherent I intend to die, paying up to the last cent the debts that my Bishop contracted and that he then left me to pay.

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Given the current times, perhaps I will arrange for my future funeral services, the day that will be, take place at dawn in a strictly private form, to prevent a consistent man, but now reduced to a helpless corpse, must undergo the filthy anthology of stupidity that priests manage to say in certain circumstances, but worse still the bishops. Then I will be buried in a small cemetery, in a remote fraction of my diocese to which I belong, where in the total indifference of the priests, today all ready with a tear in the eye to pull the water at the mill of the ideology of the poor and migrants, I have never celebrated Holy Mass even once.

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A little bad, I'll go there dead, if anything, by writing on the tombstone:

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«Here lies a sinner who has sinned in thoughts all his life, word and deed, but not in omissions, for nothing that was as true as it was inconvenient has he ever failed to say until God has given him breath. Who passes in front of this tomb, pray for the soul of Father Ariel ".

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the Island of Patmos, 1January 2022

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