Fraternity of Communion and Liberation

Fraternity of Communion and Liberation

OFFICIAL NAME

Fraternity of Communion and Liberation

ACRONYM

CL

ALSO KNOWN AS

Communion and Liberation

ESTABLISHED

1954

HISTORY

At the beginning of the 1950s, realising the need to rebuild the Christian presence in the student world, Father Luigi Giussani, a professor at the Theological Faculty at Venegono (Varese) dedicated himself to teaching religion in schools. The experience of a small group of students from the Berchet classical high school in Milan, which gathered around him, led to the establishment of Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth). With the strong encouragement of the Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, Gioventù Studentesca spread to other Italian cities, and after 1968 it also began to involve undergraduates and adults. This led to the establishment of Communion and Liberation which,in 1980, was to be canonically recognised by the Ordinary Abbot of Montecassino, Mgr Martino Matronola. The first fraternity groups were set up in the latter half of the 1970s by CL graduates who, using a method based on communion, wished to strengthen their membership of the Church as adults, along with the responsibilities that this entails. It was through their spread to various countries that the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation came about. On 11 February 1982 the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation as an international association of the faithful of Pontifical Right.

IDENTITY

The essence of the CL charism is the proclamation that God became Man; in the affirmation that this man - Jesus of Nazareth, who died and