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Funeral funeral of the apostolic nuncio Adriano Bernardini. Homily pronounced by Father Ariel S. LEVI GUALDO

Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro, Church of Monastery of Piandimeleto, 15 September 2025 hours 15:00. Exequine of S.E. Mons. Adriano Bernardini, Archbishop the owner of Faleri and apostolic nuncio.

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† From the Gospel according to John (14, 1-6)

During that time, Jesus told his disciples: “Your heart is not troubled. Have faith in God and have faith in me too. In the house of my Father there are many places. if not, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place; When I am gone and I will have prepared you a place, I'll come back and take you with me, Why be you where I am. And the place where I go, You know the way ". Tommaso told him: "Man, we do not know where you are going and how can we know the way?». Jesus told him: «I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Your heart is not troubled. Have faith in God and have faith in me too. In the house of my Father there are many homes. if not, I would have ever told you: I'm going to prepare a place? When I am gone and I will have prepared you a place, I will come again and take you with me, Because where I am you too. And the place where I go, You know the way ". Tommaso told him: “man, We don't know where you go; How can we know the way?». Jesus told him: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”».

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Esteemed Bishops Domenico, shepherd of this ours Particular church e Andrea, emeritus, Confreres friends and all of you dear present here: «Grace to you and peace from God, our father, and by the Lord Jesus Christ ".

Receiving the 30 August the sacred anointing of the sick Adriano Bernardini Archbishop the owner of Miss and apostolic nuncio, The words of the Gospel of John whispered to me: "Dad, The time has come " (GV 17, 1-2). This is why I chose to greet him with a homily taken from this fourth Gospel, where the apostle Peter asks Jesus: "Man, where are you going?». Jesus responds to Pietro who was not yet ready: "Where I go, You can't follow me for now; You will follow me later ". The same had said just before all the disciples: «Where I'm going, You cannot come " (GV 13, 33-34).

They are fragments which reveal the emotion for the imminent detachment from the divine Master. Perhaps this is why the words of the newly proclaimed Gospel open up with an invitation of Jesus who becomes, In addition to being promised also Balsamo: “Your heart is not troubled. Have faith in God and have faith in me too. In the house of my Father there are many homes ".

With his words Jesus is making his departure and emptiness that leaves an opportunity for rebirth for his disciples. Asking for faith, He pushes them to transform the fear of the new and the terror of abandonment in the courage to give themselves, leaning on the Lord who promises to go to prepare a place for them. He lives his departure in relation to those who stay and show that he is not abandoning them, But a different phase of relationship with them is inaugurating. The detachment is in view of a new reception based on a precise promise: "I'll take you with me" (GV 14,2-3).

In a difficult circumstance like this it's nice to go back to the beginning, When the disciples, the future of the Apostle, they had the first contact with Jesus and asked him: "Rabbi, Maestro, where you live?». He told them: «Come and see».

"Staying" or "dwelling", "Coming" and "see" They are the verbs that especially in the Gospel of John describe the path of faith, The arrival of the disciple and the answer to Pietro's question: "Where are you going, where we can meet and find you again?». Jesus will say one day: “Stay in my love, how the branch remains in the vine, Because I observed the commandments of my Father and I remain in his love. That is the place where I live, I remain and live " (GV 15,9-10).

Here is the goal of the disciple for which it will not be necessary to wait for the transit of death, because it is here, Now, Available for everyone, Because Jesus got away. It is not a future reality that will prove to be beyond this life through death, hard pass for those who have to go beyond it and a painful legacy for those who have to live with memory, But it is a gift present for those who "believe in him" (GV 14,12).

It is therefore not even troubled our heart in the face of detachment, rather, let's get ready to recognize the place that each of us is responsible for the eternal home that awaits us. Similar in place of the beloved disciple who reclined his head on the chest of Jesus in the last dinner. He was placed in the breast of Jesus (GV 13,25), who, As the prologue Giovanneo says "he returned to his father's breast and opened the way" (GV 1,18), Now "he came his hour to go from this world to his father (GV 13,1) tells us: "Nobody comes to the Father except by means of me".

To try to propose the not easy reasons, but pursuable and feasible of the Holy Gospel, the Church has always used many means, including diplomacy. This is the apostolic nuncio: a bearer and announcer of the Holy Gospel called to create the Peace of Christ in the world. But let's try to depict everything with a concrete example: in October 1962 The world touched the third world war with the "Cuba crisis". By now the two interlocutors, Nikita Kruscev and John Fitzgerald Kennedy could no longer speak or treat, because neither was willing to take a step back. It was at that tragic moment that the Holy Pope John XXIII intervened that, good to remember, It was not properly that simple farmer who is affected in certain popular iconographies, it came from the world of diplomacy and had been a diplomat also refined, Especially in his mandate as an apostolic nuncio in France. The two interlocutors accepted the appeal both simultaneously and the missile heads on the course of Cuba returned back. A few months later, in April 1963, The Holy Pontiff published his encyclical Peace on Earth. The peace message of the Gospel prevailed thanks to pontifical diplomacy. Today, The books of contemporary history, They narrate that that diplomatic intervention saved humanity from the risk of a third world war.

Instead of reciting the litanies of its virtues I will mention one of its flaws, To demonstrate how a servant of the Church and the Papacy can change a defect by virtue through the three virtues of faith, hope and charity (cf.. The Cor 13, 1-13), who do not stand on emotions, worse on visceral ideologies, but on reason. Faith seeking understanding and by reverse understanding seeking faith, or: faith requires reason and by reverse the reason requires faith, As the father of the school classical Sant'Anselmo d’Aosta enunciated, in turn renovated at the thought of the Holy Father and Doctor of the Agostino Church Bishop of Hippona: I believe in order to understand and by reverse I understand that you can trust, or, I believe to understand, I understand to believe. Until to reach the Holy Pontiff John Paul II who summarized this relationship between reason and faith in the encyclical Faith and Reason, faith and reason.

Resolved by temperament, he was capable of becoming unwatchable. In the last months of life it has been weakened by the disease, but keeping its peculiar character. A day, During his last hospitalization in the Roman nursing home Villa del Rosario - where incidentally he was accurately cared for by doctors, from paramedics and nuns -, He began to consider just a wrong thing that could have been harmful to him. I said to him and, on the first ones, Almost angry, But I subsided him reminding him of the page of the Gospel in which the speech in which Jesus tells Pietro is told: "" In truth, I say to you: when you were younger, you used to dress yourself, and walked where you; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want ' (GV 21, 18). He smiled and replied ironic: that is fine, I will follow you, But try to take me where I want to go ".

People with a resolved character Christianity owes a lot, Just think of the passage of the acts of the apostles where it is told of the blessed apostle Paul who "discussed with the Greeks" (translation: argued with them); "But these tried to kill him" (translation: because they didn't stand it). «The Brothers, knowing it, They led him to Caesarea and from there they sent him to Tarsus " (translation: We try to save his life in the name of the newborn Christian charity). And in closing the diplomatic conclusion of this chronicle: «So the Church, Throughout Judea, at Galilea is at Samaria, he had peace " (which translated means: Luckily he left) (At 9, 29-31). but yet, What we owe to the resolute and not very angular character of the blessed apostle Paul?

I honored his will avoiding beatifications by means of epic tales and triumphal biographies, as sometimes it is used to the funeral, Things from him detestates, Also because none of us know the judgment of God, But we all know how big his reward is for his faithful servants, Because only the men of faith forged by the authentic virtues manage to change their apparent defects in precious service to the Church; and in this sense, From San Paolo to Sant’Agostino, The list of these extraordinary men is very long. To damage the Church are not the men made resolved by their strength of character, But those who don't know how to say yes when it is yes and no when it's no (See. Mt 5, 37); They are the weak proud of their veiled weakness of spiritualisms and mysticisms, unaware that we, in the following of Christ, We are called to be salt, no sugar land (cf.. Mt 5, 13-16). Indeed, When we were consecrated priests, we were not given a sweet thought, The consecrating bishop told us: "Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, conform your life to the mystery of the cross of Christ the Lord ". All based on the words of the divine master who warned us: “If someone wants to come behind me deny himself, Take his cross and follow me " (Mt 16, 24-25).

All this he tried to understand it, live it and transmit it through a particular way to announce and bring the Gospel: Ecclesiastical diplomacy at the service of the Church of Christ and the Apostolic See.

The source of true ecclesiastical diplomacy It is all enclosed on the lines, inside the lines and beyond the lines of the Gospel that, from century to century, until the return of Christ at the end of the time, will not cease to highlight our miseries and our human wealth, our limits and our sizes, our sins and our Christian virtues. And these days, Perhaps more than ever comes to say with the blessed apostle Paolo: «I fought the good fight, I finished my race, I kept faith " (II Tm 4,6). Because it is not easy to keep faith, Not even within that human society that is the visible Church, defined as "holy and sinner" by the Holy Bishop Ambrogio, followed centuries later by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who mediating in 2005 The ninth station of the Via Crucis complained: "How much dirt is in the church, and precisely also among those who, in the priesthood, they should belong completely to him!».

Who is this priest climbed on the pulpit To preach in memory of Adriano Bishop? I am a useless servant. As the Lord Jesus says in fact: “When you have done everything you have been ordered, said: “We are useless servants. We did what we had to do "" (LC 17, 10). What was my intimate relationship with him? I reply saying that in the Lucanian Gospel we speak of the great confidentiality of the Blessed Virgin Mary that "for her part, he took all these things by meditating in his heart " (LC 2, 19).

The apostle writes to the inhabitants of Corinth: "Where, death, your victory?» (The Cor 15, 55). Reflecting on this step at the end of his life, The Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI commented: «I do not prepare in the end but to a meeting since death opens to life, to the eternal one, which is not an infinite duplication of the present time, But something completely new ".

Have a nice trip to the "new" good trip "in the eternal", Adriano Bishop, you did how much you had to do, like all of us "useless servants", I witness it as a child, friend and brother. Every 11 September, until I can physically, I will be in this place at the particular church of San Marino-Montefeltro, to which I belong as a presbyter - although it was not lived in Montefeltro but in Rome with you -, To celebrate in your birthplace, Today also your burial place, A Holy Mass for the immortal soul of the Father, of the friend and brother you have been for me.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Santa Maria del Mutino, loc. Monastery of Piandimeleto, 15 September 2025

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Funeral Mass for Apostolic Nuncio Adriano Bernardini. HOMILY DELIVERED BY FATHER ARIEL S. LEVI GUALDO

Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro, Monastery Church of Piandimeleto, September 15, 2025, 3:00 PM. Esequial Mass for His Excellency Msgr. Adriano Bernardini, Holder Archbishop of Federi and Apostolic Nuncio.

— Ecclesial actuality —

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† Gospel of John (14, 1-6)

«”Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where [I] am going you know the way”. Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”».

 

Venerable Bishops Dominic, shepard of this particular Church, and Andrew, Bishops emeritus, Brother friends, and all of you dearly beloved present here: «Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!».

Receiving the sacred anointing of the sick on August 30, Adriano Bernardini, Holder Archbishop of Federi and Apostolic Nuncio, whispered to me the words of the Gospel of John: «Father, the hour has come» (Jn 17:1-2). For this reason, I chose to greet him with a homily taken from this Fourth Gospel, where the Apostle Peter asks Jesus: «Lord, where are you going? Jesus responds to Peter, who was not yet ready: “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; you will follow me later”. He had said the same thing shortly before to all the disciples: “Where I am going, you cannot come”» (Jn 13:33-34).

These fragments reveal the emotion of the imminent separation from the Divine Master. Perhaps this is why the words of the Gospel just proclaimed open with an invitation from Jesus that becomes not only a promise but also a balm: «Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms».

With his words, Jesus is making his departure and the void it leaves an opportunity for rebirth for his disciples. By asking them for faith, he pushes them to transform their fear of the new and the terror of abandonment into the courage to give themselves, relying on the Lord who promises to go and prepare a place for them. He experiences his departure in relationship with those who remain and shows that he is not abandoning them, but is inaugurating a different phase of relationship with them. This separation is in preparation for a new welcome based on a specific promise: «I will take you to myself» (Jn 14:2-3).

In a difficult circumstance like this, it’s beautiful to return to the beginning, when the disciples, future apostles, first encountered Jesus and asked him: «Rabbi, Master, where are you staying?». He said to them: «Come and see».

«To remain» or «to abide», «to come» and «to see» are the verbs that, especially in the Gospel of John, describe the journey of faith, the disciple’s arrival, and the answer to Peter’s question: «Where are you going? Where can we meet you and find you again?» Jesus will one day say: «Remain in my love, as the branch remains in the vine, for I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. There is my dwelling place, where I remain and dwell» (Jn 15:9-10).

This is the disciple’s goal, for which there is no need to wait for the passing of death, because it is here, now, available to all, because Jesus has become the way. It is not a future reality that will be revealed beyond this life through death, a difficult passage for those who must cross it and a painful legacy for those who will have to live with the memory, but it is a present gift for those who «believe in him» (Jn 14:12).

Let not our hearts, then, be troubled by separation; rather, let us prepare ourselves from now to recognize the place that belongs to each of us in the eternal home that awaits us. Similar to the place of the beloved disciple who leaned his head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper. He was reclining in Jesus’ bosom (Jn 13:25), who, as the John prologue says, «has returned to the bosom of the Father and has opened the way» (Jn 1:18), now «when his hour has come to pass from this world to the Father» (Jn 13:1), he tells us: «No one comes to the Father except through me».

To try to propose the difficult, yet attainable and achievable, reasons for the Holy Gospel, the Church has always used many means, including diplomacy. This is the Apostolic Nuncio: a bearer and proclaimer of the Holy Gospel called to establish the Peace of Christ in the world. But let’s try to illustrate this with a concrete example: in October 1962, the world came close to World War III with the “Cuban crisis”. By then, the two interlocutors, Nikita Khrushchev and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, could no longer speak or negotiate, because neither was willing to take a step back. It was at that tragic moment that the Holy Pontiff John XXIII intervened. It is worth remembering that he was not exactly the simpleton depicted in certain popular iconography; he came from the world of diplomacy and had been a refined diplomat, especially during his tenure as Apostolic Nuncio to France. Both sides simultaneously accepted the appeal, and the missile warheads headed toward Cuba were turned back. A few months later, in April 1963, the Holy Pontiff published his encyclical Pacem in Terris. The Gospel’s message of peace prevailed thanks to papal diplomacy. Today, contemporary history books tell us that this diplomatic intervention saved humanity from the risk of a Third World War.

Rather than reciting the litany of his virtues, I will mention one of his defects, to demonstrate how a servant of the Church and the Papacy can transform a defect into a virtue through the three virtues of faith, hope, and charity (cf. 1 Color 13:1-13), which are not based on emotions, or worse, on visceral ideologies, but on reason. Faith seeking understanding and and vice versa understanding seeking faith, or faith requires reason, and conversely, reason requires faith, as the father of classical scholasticism, Saint Anselm of Aosta, stated, in turn drawing on the thought of the Holy Father and Doctor of the Church, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: I believe in order to understand and vice versa I understand that you can trust, or I believe in order to understand, I understand in order to believe. This culminated in the Holy Pontiff John Paul II, who summarized this relationship between reason and faith in the encyclical Faith and Reason, Faith and Reason.

Resolute by temperament, he was capable of becoming immovable. In the last months of his life, he was weakened by illness, but retained his peculiar character. One day, during his final stay at the Roman nursing home Villa del Rosario — where, incidentally, he was excellently cared for by doctors, paramedics, and nuns — he began to consider a wrong thing that could have been harmful to him as right. I told him this, and at first he almost became angry, but I calmed him by reminding him of the Gospel passage recounting Jesus speech to Peter: «Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go» (Jn 21:18). He smiled and replied ironically: «All right, I will follow you, but try to take me where I want to go».

Christianity owes much to people of resolute character. Just think of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles where the Blessed Apostle Paul is described as «arguing with the Greeks» (translation: he argued with them); «but they sought to kill him» (translation: because they could not stand him). «When the brothers learned of this, they took him to Caesarea, and from there they sent him to Tarsus» (translation: we tried to save his life in the name of the nascent Christian charity). And finally, the diplomatic conclusion to this chronicle: «So the church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace» (which translated means: thank goodness he left) (Acts 9:29-31). And yet, how much do we owe to the resolute and not a little rough-edged character of the Blessed Apostle Paul?

I have honored his will by avoiding beatifications through epic tales and triumphal biographies, as is sometimes customary at funerals, things he detested, also because none of us know God’s judgment, but we all know how great his reward is for his faithful servants, because only men of faith forged by authentic virtues are able to transform even their apparent defects into precious service to the Church; and in this sense, from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine, the list of these extraordinary men is very long. Those who harm the Church are not men made resolute by their strength of character, but those who cannot say yes when it is yes and no when it is no (cf. Mt 5:37); they are the weak, proud of their own weakness veiled in spiritualism and mysticism, unaware that we, in following Christ, are called to be the salt, not the sugar, of the earth (cf. Mt 5:13-16). In fact, when we were consecrated priests, we weren’t given a sentimental thought; the consecrating Bishop told us: «Realize what you will do, imitate what you will celebrate, conform your life to the mystery of the cross of Christ the Lord». All of this was based on the words of the Divine Master who admonished us: «If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me» (Mt 16:24-25).

He sought to understand, live, and transmit all of this through a particular way of announcing and bringing the Gospel: ecclesiastical diplomacy in the service of the Church of Christ and the Apostolic See.

The source of true ecclesiastical diplomacy lies entirely inside and beyond the written lines of the Gospel, which, from century to century, until Christ’s return at the end of time, will never cease to highlight our human miseries and riches, our limitations and our greatness, our sins and our Christian virtues. And in these times, perhaps more than ever, we can say with the Blessed Apostle Paul: «have competed well; I have finished the race;f I have kept the faith» (2 Tim 4:7). Because it is not easy to maintain the faith, not even within that human society which is the visible Church, defined as “holy and sinful” by the Holy Bishop Ambrose, followed centuries later by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who, meditating on the ninth station of the Way of the Cross in 2005, lamented: «How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong completely to him!»

Who is this priest who ascended the pulpit to preach in memory of Bishop Hadrian? I am an unprofitable servant. As the Lord Jesus says: «When you have done all that you were commanded, say, “So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do”» (Page 17:10). What was my intimate relationship with him? I answer by saying that the Gospel of Luke speaks of the great reserve of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who «And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart» (Page 2:19).

The Apostle writes to the people of Corinth: « Where, O death, is your victory?» (1 Color 15:55). Reflecting on this passage at the end of his life, the Roman Pontiff Benedict XVI commented: «I am not preparing for the end but for an encounter, since death opens the way to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time, but something completely new».

Have a good journey into the «new» world, and a good journey into the «eternal», Bishop Adriano. You have done what you had to do, like all of us «unprofitable servants». I bear witness to this as a son, friend, and brother. Every September 11th, as long as I am physically able, I will come to this place, to the particular Church of San Marino-Montefeltro, to which I belong as a priest — although I did not live in Montefeltro but in Rome with you — to celebrate in your birthplace, now also your burial place, a Holy Mass for the immortal soul of the father, friend, and brother you were to me.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Santa Maria del Mutino, Monastery of Piandimeleto, 15 September 2025

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Funeral funerals of the Apostolic Nuncio Adriano Bernardini. Homily pronounced by Father Ariel S. LEVI GUALDO

Diócesis de San Marino-Montefeltro, PIANDIMELETO MONASTERIO CHURCH, 15 September of 2025. Funeral Exequises of S.E. Mons. Adriano Bernardini, Archbishop holder of Fallei and Apostolic Nuncio.

- Ecclesial news -

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† From the Gospel according to John (14, 1-6)

«At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not worry. They believe in God and also create in me. In my father's house there are many rooms; If so, I would have told you. I'm going to prepare a place. And when I went and prepared a place, I will return again to take them with me, so that where I am, You are too. They already know the path of the place where I'm going”. Tomás told him: “Señor, We do not know where you go. How are we going to know the way?”.Jesus replied: “I am the way, The truth and life. No one goes to the father, but for me”».

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Venerable Bishops Domenico, pastor of this Particular church and Andrea emeritus, Cohermans priests, friends and all estimated present: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ".

Receiving the 30 August the anointing of the sick Adriano Bernardini, Archbishop holder of Fallei and Apostolic Nuncio, I was whispered by the words of the Gospel of John: "Dad, The time has come » (Jn 17, 1-2). That is why I have chosen to fire him with a homily extracted from this fourth gospel, where the apostle Peter asks Jesus: «Señor, Where are you going?». Jesus responds to Peter that he was not yet prepared: «Where I go, You can't follow me now; You will follow me later ». The same had said shortly before all the disciples: «Where I go, You can't come » (Jn 13, 33-34)

They are fragments that reveal the emotion for the imminent separation of the divine teacher. Perhaps that is why the words of the newly proclaimed Gospel open with an invitation from Jesus that becomes, In addition to promise, In balm: «Your heart is not turned. HAVE FAITH IN GOD AND HAVE FAITH IN ME. In my father's house there are many dwellings ».

With his words Jesus is doing his departure and the vacuum that leaves an occasion of rebirth for his disciples. Asking for faith, It drives them to transform fear towards the new and terror to abandonment into value to surrender, leaning on the Lord who promises to prepare a place for them. He lives his departure in relation to who stays and shows that he is not leaving him, but it is inaugurating a different phase of relationship with them. The separation is in view of a new reception based on a precise promise: "I'll take you with me" (Jn 14, 2-3).

In a difficult circumstance like this It is good to return to the beginning, When the disciples, future apostles, They had the first contact with Jesus and asked him: "Rabbi, Maestro, Where Moras?». He told them: "Come and you will see".

"Stay" the "living", "Come" and "see" They are the verbs that above all in the Gospel of John describe the path of faith, The arrival of the disciple and the answer to Pedro's question: «Where are you going, Where can we find and find you again?». Jesus will say one day: «Remove in my love, As the Sarmiento remains in the vine, Because I have kept my father's commandments and remain in his love. That is the place where I live, I remain and Moor » (Jn 15, 9-10).

Here is the goal of the disciple for which there is no need to wait for the transit of death, Because it's here, now, Available for everyone, Because Jesus has made his way. It is not a future reality that will be revealed beyond this life through death, A difficult step for those who must carry it and a painful legacy for those who must live with the memory, but a present gift for those who "believe in him" (Jn 14, 12).

That is not disturbed our heart before the separation, but let's prepare from now on to recognize the place that corresponds to each of us in the eternal abode that awaits us. Which is similar to the place of the beloved disciple who reclined his head in Jesus's chest at the last dinner. This was reclined in Jesus' bosom (Jn 13, 25), which, As the Joan prologue says "he has returned to the father's bosom and opened the way" (Jn 1,18), Now «having arrived his time to move from this world to the father (Jn 13, 1) He tells us: "No one goes to the father but for me".

To try to propose the reasons not easy, But attainable and realizable of the Holy Gospel, The Church is always served as many media, including diplomacy. This is the Apostolic Nuncio: a bearer and announcer of the Holy Gospel called to make the Peace of Christ In the world. But let's try to represent all this with a specific example: In October of 1962 The world touched the third world war with the "crisis of Cuba". Already the two interlocutors, Nikita Jrushchov and John Fitzgerald Kennedy could not speak or negotiate, Because neither was willing to step back. It was at that tragic moment when the Holy Pontiff John XXIII intervened that, It is good to remember it, It was not properly that simple peasant represented in certain popular iconographies. He came from the world of diplomacy and had been a refined diplomat, especially in its function as Apostolic Nuncio in France. The two interlocutors welcomed the call simultaneously and the missile heads en route to Cuba. A few months later, In April of 1963, The Holy Pontiff published his encyclical Peace on Earth. The peace message of the Gospel prevailed thanks to the pontifical diplomacy. Hoy, Contemporary history books tell that this diplomatic intervention saved humanity from the risk of a third world war.

Instead of reciting the litanies of the virtues I will refer to a defect of yours, To demonstrate how a server of the Church and the papacy can mutate a defect under the three virtues of faith, hope and charity (cf.. The Cor 13, 1-13), which do not support emotions, or worse about visceral ideologies, but about reason. Faith seeking understanding and conversely understanding seeking faith, that is to say: Faith requires reason and inversely reason requires faith, As the father of the classic scholasticic San Anselmo de Aosta stated in turn to the thought of the Holy Father and Doctor of the Agustín Bishop's Church of Hipona: I believe in order to understand and conversely I understand that you can trust, I mean, I think to understand, I understand to believe. And finally, the Holy Pontiff John Paul is reached that summarized this relationship between reason and faith in the encyclical Faith and Reason, Faith and reason.

Decided by temperament, was able to become immovable. In recent months of life it was weakened by the disease, But it retained its peculiar character. One day, During his last stay at the house of Cura Romana Villa del Rosario - where, by the way, He was treated excellently by doctors, paramedics and religious -, It began to consider correct a wrong thing that could have been harmful to him. I told him and, at first, He almost got angry, But I calmed him by reminding him of the Gospel page in which the speech in which Jesus says to Peter is narrated: ""Actually, I really tell you: When you were younger, You gave up and you were where you wanted; But when you are old, You will extend your hands, And another will stick to you and take you wherever you want ”» (Jn 21, 18). Smiled and replied ironic: Alright, I will follow you, But try to take me where I want to go ».

To people of a determined nature, Christianity must a lot, It is enough to think about the passage of the Acts of the Apostles where it is told that the Blessed Apostle Paul "argued with the Greeks" (translation: He rejected with them); "But these sought to kill him" (translation: because they didn't support him). «The brothers, Knowing it, They led him to Cesarea and from there they sent him to Tarso » (translation: Let's try to save his life on behalf of the nascent Christian charity). And at the end of the diplomatic conclusion of this chronaca: «Thus the Church, all over, Gather was the Samaritan, had peace » (which translated means: Luckily he left) (Hch 9, 29-31). And yet, How much should we owe to the determined and not little spiny character of the Blessed Apostle Paul?

I have honored his will avoiding beatifications through epic stories and triumphal biographies, as sometimes it is usually done in funerals, things held by him, Also because none of us know God's judgment, But we all know how big is his reward for his faithful servants, because only the men of faith forged by the authentic virtues manage to mutate in precious service for the Church even their apparent defects; And in that sense, From San Pablo to San Agustín, The list of these extraordinary men is very long. It is not the men determined by their strength of nature that damage the Church, but those who do not know how to say when it is yes and not when it is not (See. Mt 5, 37); They are proud of their evening weakness in spiritualisms and mysticisms, unconscious that we, In the sequel of Christ, We have been called to be salt and not the sugar of the earth (cf.. Mt 5, 13-16). In fact, When we were consecrated priests, we were not given an cloy, The consecrating bishop told us: «Realize what you will do, imitates what you will celebrate, Conform your life to the mystery of the Cross of Christ Lord ». All this, based on the words of the divine teacher who has warned us: «If anyone wants to come after me, Note yourself, Take your cross and follow me » (Mt 16, 24-25).

All this he has sought to understand it, live and transmit it through a particular way of announcing and carrying the gospel: Ecclesiastical diplomacy at the service of the Church of Christ and the Apostolic Headquarters.

The source of true ecclesiastical diplomacy All contained in the lines, within the lines and beyond the lines of the Gospel that, from century to century, Until the return of Christ at the end of time, It will not cease to highlight our miseries and our human wealth, our limits and our greatness, our sins and our Christian virtues. And in these times, Maybe more than ever, We can say with the Blessed Apostle Paul: «I have fought the good combat, I've finished my career, I have kept faith » (2 Tim 4, 6). Because it is not easy to conserve faith, Not even within that human society that is the visible church, defined "holy and sinner" by the Holy Bishop Ambrosio, Or centuries later, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who meditating on 2005 The ninth station of Crucis lamented: «How much dirt is in church, and precisely among those who, In the priesthood, They should belong completely!».

Who is this priest uploaded to the pulpit to preach in memory of Adriano Bishop? I am a useless servant. As the Lord Jesus says in fact: «“ When you have done everything that has been sent to you, DECIDED: “We are useless servants. We have done what we should do ”” » (LC 17, 10). What was my intimate relationship with him? I respond by saying that in the Lucan gospel there is talk of the Gran Reserva of the Blessed Virgin Mary who «for her part, He kept all these things by meditating them in his heart » (LC 2, 19).

The Apostle writes to the inhabitants of Corinth: "Where is, oh death, Your victory?» (The Cor 15, 55). Reflecting on this step at the end of your life, The high pontiff Benedict XVI commented: «I do not prepare for the end but for an encounter because death opens to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time, but something completely new ».

Good trip to the "new" good trip "to the eternal", Adriano Obispo, You have done how much you should do, Like all of us "useless servants", I am witness as a child, Friend and brother. Each 11 September, While physically possible to me, I will come to this place under the jurisdiction of the particular church of San Marino-Montefeltro, to which I belong as a presbyter - although I have not lived in Montefeltro but in Rome with you -, To celebrate in your native place, Already today your burial place, A Holy Mass for the immortal soul of the Father, of the friend and brother that you have been for me.

Praise be Jesus Christ!

Santa Maria del Mutino, Monastery of Piandimeleto, 15 September 2025

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