Yesterday marked four years since the passing of Antonio Cantisani, the Bishop-Priest who served the Church with rigor of faith and moral uprightness, which he called “my bride.” What a wonderful priest and what a wonderful Bishop Antonio was! A Bishop who left an indelible mark not only in the two dioceses of Catanzaro and Squillace, but in the entire Church of Rome. A cultured, refined bishop, with thought enlightened by faith. A sincere and intense orator, with words that were nourishing, rich, and fascinating, with engaging gestures, vibrant in tone, voice, and accents of deep humanity. He was a priest, always available and open, for the humility that accompanied his service in words and for the affection and simplicity with which he approached people. He was the one who would go to people, not waiting for them in a hieratic manner, seated on the Episcopal throne, as many do. Cantisani, a man of profound secularity, who knew how to distinguish, without fanaticism, what belonged to religion from what belonged to the world in which so many more people live. People who question the great issues of human existence. And about the future of this world that has progressively lost both the principles of faith and those purely human, becoming a place truly difficult to live in for a man who is increasingly confused. And weak. This is so true, so present in him, that I am led to say that Cantisani’s main strength lay precisely in his secular ability to operate in society. Bringing to it his faith and his ability to explain its value towards a religion that carries with it the most beautiful instrument that can exist in any other belief, the Gospel. Cantisani was the best preacher of the Gospel. The “missionary” who knew how to explain it to you word by word, making it relevant to the everyday life of men and society. He made you feel the Gospel as a vademecum for the human journey. For all human beings. A guide for those who wanted, indeed for all those who are and were obliged, by their essentially good human nature, to look to Goodness, pursuing it in every act and in every daily action. Goodness not for oneself, but for others. And what is the Good that Cantisani, through the Gospel, points out to all men? It is that of Peace to be built through the three fundamental principles: equality, justice, charity. Charity, in particular, as a sure vehicle for achieving the first two. There will be no Peace, said Antoniuzzu bellu, without the practical realization of these principles. He explained them even more in detail, stating that justice means wealth for all, the absence not only of the poor, but of poverty itself. Equality, that all human beings are equal by natural law—here is the secularity—and by the will of God, creator of life. To be equal means that everyone, no one excluded, has the right to work, to their own land in their own free State. Everyone has the right to live in the one Earth, the world, which belongs to every human being. Especially those who, for whatever reason, and even more for the need to live, move from their place to reach other lands, from their country to reach other countries. For this reason, Monsignor Cantisani can be defined—and his numerous interventions and writings, as well as the battles fought in the name of justice, prove it—as one of the first personalities who had the courage to bring to the attention of both the Church and institutions the issue of migrants. To those, especially men and women in government, who still today speak of migrants, or immigrants, as if they were individuals without dignity and not people overflowing with beauty, they should be “punished” by being forced to study his texts. And it matters little if some are so ignorant and closed to learning that they would not understand anything. Antonio Cantisani was first the priest and then the bishop of the open Church. The one that, outside the sacristies, must go to seek out the weakest, the marginalized, the poorest of all. And also those who, especially in our City, have changed social condition and hide, out of pride and “shame,” their condition of newfound poverty. Cantisani amazed with his continuous cultural growth, which in him did not stop even in advanced age and in the illness that greatly troubled him in recent years. He never stopped studying, especially his Cassiodorus. He never stopped speaking, always with that slight body that became animated in saying the things that came from the depths of his heart and his boundless mind. A mind always questioning and searching for beauty, truth, and justice. On these principles, while teaching, like true masters, he questioned himself, always putting himself up for discussion and always setting out in search of the truth. Until the end of his days. I could write thousands more words about him. But I will stop here. Both because I have written and said many of these in the past four years, and because I would end up weighing down this text. And then, who does not know, and more than I, Antonio Cantisani! The young people who could not “meet” him should know about him. It would be good if he were talked about in parishes, and even in schools, in some way. A well-represented Cantisani would still be the best of teachers for everyone. Today I speak of him, and with unending sorrow, not because I miss the friend, the father, the teacher that he was for me. That is a given. I speak of him because I feel that his absence, together with that of great men who have left us even recently, weighs like a boulder on the City. Catanzaro is increasingly poor. Of everything. Not just economically. It is poor on a cultural and moral level. It is poor for the lack of points of reference. Especially in the world of culture and Politics, as in institutions. There is a lack of high figures, culturally and morally, who can represent a guide for this uncertain journey and a light on roads that are increasingly unsafe and dark. There is a lack of strength to cling to, individually and collectively, in the existential difficulties that our City has progressively worsened. Antonio Cantisani, the enlightened one, the Christian, the thoughtful layman, the humble and “servile” man, the most Catanzaro-like of all of us, we miss him. So much. And thinking of him brings us to tears of nostalgia. And the shiver on the skin for the emptiness he has left.
Franco Cimino