Father Milani: A "Faggot" and "Heretic"

Cristina Siccardi wrote on Corrispondenza Romana about Italian Father Lorenzo Milani (+1967), to whose tomb Pope Francis made a private visit calling Milani "an exemplary servant of the Gospel", "I thank the Lord for having given us priests like Father Milani."

Milani was involved in school experiments that saw the school as a ransom for the poor, not as a confessional place. Therefore Christian symbols and sacred images had to be removed and the crucifix could legitimately disappear from the classrooms. His Lettera a una professoressa ("Letter To a Schoolmistress") became a manifesto of the Communist student protests in 1968 and contributed to a failed school reform in Italy.

When in 1954 Milani was transferred to the 100-people parish Barbiana, he wrote to his mother that "it was obvious to anyone, that I was confined here as a faggot and heretical demagogue, who probably also admitted his guilt because I did not object." In Milani's letters, references to homosexuality and pedophilia are frequent. Even Alberto Melloni, a Milani apologist, speaks about Milani's physical attraction for boys and admits his homosexuality.

Milani's main work is Esperienze pastorali ("Pastoral Experiences"). La Civiltà Cattolica wrote in 1958 that it was "filled with obsessions and contradictions". In Esperienze pastorali Milani writes about himself, "I have taken away the peace from my people. I only sowed contrasts, discussions, and conflicting groups of thinking. I have always handled souls and situations with the hardness that suits the master. I had no manners, no regard, no tactfulness (p.146)."

Picture: Lorenzo Milani, #newsXlvgnkcmea