MILAN, Italy, JUNE 27, 2011 (Zenit.org).- A parish priest, a missionary in Burma and a nun who visited prisoners are the Church’s newest beatified members, as Benedict XVI noted Sunday after praying the midday Angelus.
They are Father Serafino Morazzone, Clemente Vismara and Sister Enrichetta Alfieri, beatified Sunday in Milan.
Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, presided over the celebration, just having returned from Germany, where he had beatified three priests Saturday.
The archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, gave the homily.
«The ‘Amen’ that Serafino Morazzone, Sister Enrichetta Alfieri and Clemente Vismara pronounced coincided with the unreserved offering of their lives, put at the total disposal of others in the variety and diversity of vocations and responsibilities they received from the one Spirit,» the cardinal said.
He highlighted the figure of Father Morazzone, whose virtues were such that they were taken up by the great Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni in «I promessi sposi» (The Betrothed).
Sister Enrichetta Alfieri worked in prisons between 1923 and 1950, the period that coincided with the Fascist regime and German domination. The cardinal pointed out her support for political prisoners during those years, which landed her in prison as well.
The missionary Clemente Vismara lived in Burma between 1923 and 1988, and was called the patriarch of that country.
The three profiles of holiness, beatified precisely as the Archdiocese of Milan celebrates the fourth centenary of the death of its patron, St. Charles Borromeo, are, Cardinal Tettamanzi said, «examples of sanctity built on the ordinary.»
