people-from-emilia-romagna

"Muratori really proved himself to be a universal genius of rare calibre, at home in all fields of human knowledge. He showed extraordinary qualities as priest and man; he was zealous in the ministry, charitable to the poor, and diligent in visiting the abandoned and imprisoned."

"I could have had that pleasure, but then the sacrifice would not have been complete."

"Fifty years a Jesuit and forty years a missionary, one of the noblest men that ever laboured in the ranks of the Church in Montana, his fame stands very high in Montana."

"The reputation for solid virtue, patience, and courage, which he had acquired in the different grades of his order, was by no means dimmed in the long years of his generalate. During Tamburini's superiorship, the apostolic activity of the Society was at its best."

"Every conductor–even those who, like me, were born in Britain and raised in the United States–must sooner or later confront the ghost of Arturo Toscanini."

"[While witnessing Cantelli conduct for the first time] That's me!"

"[After hearing Marian Anderson perform] What I heard today one is privileged to hear only once in a hundred years."

"My dear Maestro, my great friend, come to Fiume d'Italia, if you can. Here today is the most resonant air in the world. And the soul of the people is as symphonic as your orchestra. The Legionaries await the Fighter who once led the warrior chorus."

"Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto."

"I feel the necessity to tell you for once how much I admire and honor you. You are not only the unmatchable interpreter of the world’s musical literature [...] In the fight against the fascist criminals, too, you have shown yourself to be a man of greatest dignity [...] The fact that such a contemporary exists balances many of the delusions one must continually experience from the species minorum gentium."

"They ask me what my secret is. My secret is very simple: it consists in having the music performed, note by note, as the author wrote it."

"[Arturo Toscanini is] the greatest conductor in the world."

"1909, the Edwardian golden days. Genteel civilization had come to England, the continent, and the eastern United States. New York rivaled London and Paris as one of the great metropolises of the world. Albert Einstein had expounded his theory of relativity back in 1905, and science had brought us the wonders of the modern world. Culture and refinement had arrived on the east coast of America. Caruso was singing Pagliacci at the Met. Arturo Toscanini was conducting. The Barrymores were performing and a Ziegfeld girl was the rage."

"Everyone here is celebrating me—everyone is raving about me! […] Tonight I have my first concert. It's useless for me to say it, but you can imagine how nervous I am... I'm the eternal beginner. Perhaps the only person who doesn't hold myself in esteem..."

"[Upon learning of the beating of Toscanini by a group of Fascist Blackshirts] I am really happy. It will teach a good lesson to these boorish musicians."

"When Toscanini conducted, it was like fate striking, infallible, inexorable. His innate sense of rhythm, his memory, were prodigious. Operas and concerts, he conducted them all from memory, without a score."

"La Scala is the lover who made me despair the most"

"He was a great conductor, a true "servant" of music, he was the one who taught us to respect the scores, but he was also a great man, who never used music for self-interest... He was one of the three artists who radically changed the history of musical interpretation. The other two great names are Liszt, for his way of playing the piano, and Paganini for his revolutionary way of playing the violin."

"Look at him. He is one of your kind, gaunt like you. His head is carved in hard bone, between chin and forehead, with those deep hollows that form between ear and nose when he clenches his lips and jaw, with that frown that brings to mind the wild gaze of a swan beneath the swelling of its beak, with that neck that energy dilates as if to fill it with unspoken commands. Look at him. Look at his hand holding the scepter. His scepter is a wand as light as an elder rod; and it raises the great waves of the orchestra, releases the great torrents of harmony, opens the cataracts of the great river, digs the forces from the depths and carries them to the summit, restrains the tumults and reduces them to whispers, creates light and shadow, creates serenity and storm, creates mourning and jubilation… Who is he then? He is a Chief as I am a Chief, O my people."

"Every rehearsal is like a concert, and every concert like a debut."

"He projected the figure of the conductor beyond the stage. Every legend has a surplus, an excess of image. However, when he conducted, he was spare, he knew how to extract the essence from a score without adding any artifice."

"I struggle to bear the constant "SISTER"...; I was very keen on the lay character of our group because it is LAY, even if consecrated to God: it is my personal vocation."

"The martyrdom of priests is the result of their conscious choice to share the fate of the flock to the point of extreme sacrifice, when the efforts of mediation between the population and the occupiers, long pursued, lost all chance of success."

"More publicized cases are treated in the same way as the lesser known cases, always according to the rule of law. We do not have "subjects" before us, but people: the accused, alleged victims, possible witnesses... In general, there is always a picture of particular suffering. Certainly, media attention regarding the issues in question has multiplied in recent years, and this is a further stimulus to the Congregation to try to do justice in an ever more correct and effective way."

"Communism fought against religious faith and that to which religious faith is tied: the sacredness of all human life, the family, the spiritual dimension of the human person, and the call to eternal life."

"In the course of the years of formation, the students learn to understand what trust means: it is really faith, but it is a faith of abandonment, a faith of openness, of confidence through Mary by living with the Lord."

"The Christian cannot be pessimistic because Christ is Risen and Alive; He is God, as opposed to all other prophets or those calling themselves such. The final victory will be Christ's, but God's times may be long, and often are. He is patient and waits for the conversion of sinners: in the meantime He invites the Church to organize herself and to work to quicken the coming of His Kingdom."

""Stop" is the cry expressed by the Church in the name of abused humanity. The United States must also stop and I think it has the strength to do so. It must re-establish respect for human beings and return to the family of nations, overcoming the temptation to act on its own. If it does not stop, the whirlwind of horror will involve other peoples and will lead us ever more to the abyss."

"I set out for Africa, determined to tell the Gospel with my life, in the footsteps of Charles de Foucould."

"The Oriental churches are an integral part of the European identity: A Europe without the contribution of the Oriental Christian is an incomplete Europe. The first thing that's necessary is to recognize the importance of this presence, as a historical patrimony and as a present reality. Without the contributions of the spiritual and cultural traditions of the East, Europe would not be Europe any more."

"Wojtyla made his own this principle whereby, with the incarnation, Christ in some way unites himself to every man, and reveals to man the meaning of himself. Humanism is entirely founded on Christology, so that man is the obligatory path for the Church, which cannot but dedicate itself to serving the good of man. From these principles derive the rights of the human person, which is the value on which the legitimacy or illegitimacy of all political and social systems is measured."

"I believe that our hopes, but perhaps also those of the Pope, are based above all on one aspect, namely that the other is never an enemy: he is "other", "other than us", different and probably also has different existential positions, but he remains a child of God, a man, a created being, with whom it is always worth seeking dialogue to solve problems."

"Our contribution has been to preach forgiveness and never to close the door to dialogue and encounter with the other, because as long as we meet and talk, we can always seek and, God willing, find solutions."

"We must acknowledge that the Christian life cannot be lived only in front of a computer's screen. Christian life calls for living in community. Then I can encounter Jesus thanks to the rich and purposeful help of an Internet site, but afterwards I must find a community that receives me and enables me to undertake a concrete journey of faith."

"I'm afraid that because I'm a cardinal people will think of me as a success. I'm immensely afraid of that, since I'm here to bear witness instead. The Lord has given me a great grace, but if I'm a bishop it is not that I've succeeded more than others. I have more responsibility, that's for sure. Even if, as things are, because of the increasing importance of the mass media, there's no point in being a cardinal if you only come out with banalities."

"I have always been a believer and a practising Catholic. When I was finishing secondary school, my spiritual director asked me very delicately if I had ever considered becoming a priest. I liked the idea and said yes almost instinctively. Devoting myself to God seemed like something exciting. [...] My father and mother were strongly opposed. My sister Donata, then a twelve-year-old girl, was in favour, however, and she supported me, including financially, throughout her life."

"It's true that we mustn't and don't want to be closed to new contributions, but they have to be contributions that enrich our society, not impoverish it."

"In the Eucharist Jesus Christ nourishes us with his Body and his Blood, allowing us to share in the eternal fullness of divine life, allowing us to sit at table with Him at the Supper for which we rejoice for ever with the knowledge and love of God, communion of life with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, with the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints, and with all those whom we have loved on this earth and whom Jesus saved with his Cross"

"When someone is moved by apostolic zeal, he always moves forward, with a very open spirit, with the desire of always doing good. The Lord then does the rest."

"If this presence, however slight, is removed from the Middle East, then it will be very difficult to recover. Our mere presence here is almost a form of silent announcement: you can make the gospels known outside the church without preaching it in words. There are no illusions here, but we are hopeful”"

"The life of the Church and of redeemed souls is one, of the very unity of the cross, of redemption. There is only one Christ, one cross through which we can worship God and be sanctified. And it is therefore this same unity that we find in the Mass, in this application of redemption to the life of the Church, to the life of souls. Since there is only one redemption, and since it is perfect, there is only one way to perpetuate this redemption, to actualise it in time in order to apply it to souls: there is only one Catholic Mass. There are not two."

"Note here a problem: unity is achieved in the Faith. And unity cannot be achieved with an indult, a privilege that has one thing in view for some and its opposite for others. For some, the priests and faithful who want to keep the Tridentine Mass, it is a means of preserving Tradition, but for the Roman authorities – they now admit it openly – it is a means of gradually and completely bringing them over to the “conciliar Church”, to the way of thinking proper to the Church of today. All this has been established and promised in the light of the protocol signed on 5 May 1988 by Cardinal Ratzinger and Mgr. Lefebvre. Let us return to the wisdom of Monsignor Lefebvre."

"So what do we want? What does the Society of Saint Pius X want? We want the cross. We want the cross of Our Lord. We want to celebrate this cross, and we want to enter into the mystery of this cross. We want to make this cross our own. There are not two possible crosses, and there are not two possible redemptions or two possible Masses. [...] In this sense, the Mass is truly our flag, our banner. And in a battle, the banner is the last thing to be abandoned. There is one last thing that the Society must obtain. And it is crucial. We do not want this Mass solely for ourselves, but we want it for the universal Church. We do not want a side altar. We do not want the right to enter with our banner into an amphitheatre where everything is permitted. No! We want this Mass for ourselves and for everyone. We do not want a privilege. It is a right for us and for all souls, without distinction. It is through this that the Society of Saint Pius X continues and will continue to be a work of the Church. Because it has in view the good of the Church; it does not seek any particular privilege. God will choose the moment, the manner, the gradualness, the circumstances. But as far as it depends on us, we want this Mass now, without conditions and for everyone."

"Tradition is a whole, because Faith is a whole. And in the current situation more than ever, the need for an absolutely free profession of Faith is evident. The true freedom of the children of God is first and foremost the freedom to profess their Faith."

"(After death of bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais) But obviously, Providence is speaking to us through this event. It is very clear that his death raises the question of the continuance of the work of the Society, which now has only two bishops, and whose mission for souls appears ever more necessary, in the time of terrible confusion that the Church is living through today. [...] When the time comes, we will know how to take up our responsibilities, in conscience."

"The act of Monsignor Lefebvre in 1988 – like the entire history of the Society of Saint Pius X – is an act of fidelity to the Church; it is an act of fidelity to the Pope, to the hierarchy, to souls. Regardless of what the Roman authorities may say or not say, think or not think."

"(On the publication Mater Populi Fidelis) To deny the title of Co-Redemptrix is tantamount to dethroning the Most Blessed Virgin. Such a thing wounds the Catholic soul in what is dearest to it."

"First of all, it seems clear to me that with the beatifications and canonisations of all recent popes since Pope John XXIII, there has been an attempt to ‘canonise’ the Council, the new conception of the Church and Christian life that the Council established and that all recent popes have promoted. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the Church. Thus, the post-Tridentine Church never thought of canonising without distinction all the popes from Pope Paul III to Pope Sixtus V. It canonised St. Pope Pius V not only because of his links with the Council of Trent or with its implementation, but because of his personal holiness, proposed as a model for the whole Church and placed at the service of the Church as Pope. The phenomenon we are currently witnessing is more reminiscent of the renaming of main squares and avenues following a revolution or a change of regime."

"[Did you imagine you would become Superior General of the FSSPX?] A few months before the 2018 General Chapter, I had obviously heard some rumours. Before that, I must say, I had never thought about it. I particularly remember the joy of working for three years in Asia, in Singapore. Travelling a lot in Asia, I remember wanting to stay in those countries for the rest of my life. I remember very well once visiting a cemetery with all the graves of missionaries. It was a Christian cemetery in a Muslim country. When I saw those missionaries' graves, I remember very well the desire to spend my life in those countries until the end. To one day be buried there too, far from my homeland. Then the Lord changed the cards on the table."

"Do not capitulate before this world, but recapitulate everything in Christ [instaurare omnia in Christo]."