Letter sent by the young people of Movimento Impegno e Testimonianza - Madre dell'Eucaristia to Cardinal Sodano on 10th May 1999

Mr Cardinal,

we are youth couples formed within the "Movimento Impegno e Testimonianza - Madre dell'Eucaristia" that wish to get married and have a family. Each one of us may affirm that the union in the couple, as in the group, is increased in proportion to the union and love towards Jesus the Eucharist and the Mother of the Eucharist. We came to know them through Don Claudio, our spiritual director, and thanks to him we understood the importance of living a daily meeting with our Lord in the Eucharist. Along these years our spiritual heritage has been growing also because of our attendance to the Biblical catecheses, to retreats and the spiritual direction.

Our priest has spoken about the great teachings of Jesus and of the Mother of the Eucharist in order to form us primarily as persons, then as couples and in future as families.

But currently our desire to marry meets with the impossibility for our priest to celebrate the H. Mass because he has been suspended a divinis. The suspension has been imposed because he did not accept the order of the ecclesiastical authority to throw away and deny the Eucharist that bled and refused to acknowledge that he deceived himself and the community by promoting adoration of "a piece of bread". Any other person who had acted with deceit and bad faith would have chosen the easier and painless path: accept the compromise and negotiate the restoration of the H. Mass. But Don Claudio chose by any means the more difficult path: to defend Jesus the Eucharist, bravely testifying the truthfulness, the authenticity and the supernaturality of the Eucharistic miracles.

In the same way, we also do not feel to deny our priest; specifically, a couple of our friends has chosen to postpone their marriage rather than celebrate it with another priest who did not love and followed them as Don Claudio did. Just as a child who loves his father would never accept to get married without the presence of the man who gave him life, so none of us will accept to get married without the presence in the church before the altar of the man who generated them to the new life in Christ.

We have written these short but heartfelt words so you may understand how much we love our priest and how much we wish him to celebrate our marriages.

We beg of you, as children turning to their own father, to reassess the situation of Don Claudio, so that the suspension a divinis may be revoked and give him back the right to celebrate the H. Mass.

Reassure for us the Holy Father that we remember him in our prayers every day; this asked the secretary Mons. Stanislaus through a common Polish friend.

The Pope, who knows Marisa and Don Claudio, may stretch his hand, as Christ did with Peter, to avoid them to be "drown".

We greet you with love.

Rome, 10th May 1999