A book to pay homage to Don Mario Carrera
LThe Pious Union of the Transit of Saint Joseph has dedicated this book to the memory of Don Mario Carrera (1935-2025) to express his gratitude. Don Mario, at the end of a life dedicated to God in the Opera Don Guanella, dedicated himself to the Pious Union at the Basilica of Saint Joseph al Trionfale in Rome between 2005 and 2021. In this last activity, he put to good use his personal passion for communication, as well as his experience in this field, and especially increased the magazine The Holy Crusade in honor of Saint Joseph, the association's monthly organ.
The first part of the book collects six testimonies about Don Mario. The section opens with a homily by the Superior General of the Servants of Charity, Don Umberto Brugnoni, delivered in Canegrate, Don Mario's hometown, during his funeral. This is followed by two writings, one by his collaborator, Don Gabriele Cantaluppi, and the other by Don Mario's successor as director of the Pious Union, Don Bruno Capparoni. These pages conclude with a moving remembrance by Vito Viganò, Don Mario's lifelong friend, and two testimonies by Andrea Fagioli, a professional journalist and former editor of the weekly Tuscany Today, and Michele Gatta, editorial collaborator of the Guanellian magazines The Holy Crusade e To serve.
The second part presents eighteen letters from Don Mario, published in the Guanellian periodical To serve between 1984 and 1998, so as to recall his thoughts in his own words. The quarterly was drawn from To serve because they had already been collected and published in a 2015 book Building Hope, his Confidential, appeared on The Holy Crusade.
Don Mario was called to take care of the quarterly To serve in 1984, when the magazine was ten years old, having been born in April 1974, and needed a global reorganization. The column where these texts by Don Mario appeared was entitled Letter to a friend, where he wrote to imaginary correspondents, men and women, most often young, with affectionate friendship, according to his personal style much appreciated by those who knew him.
The themes addressed in the letters are those most congenial to him, such as hope, the true values to which one should dedicate one's life, silence and interiority, and charity towards the poor according to the teachings of Don Guanella. These pages brim with pedagogical attention, especially those addressed to a young reader. The writing style is also unmistakably Don Carrera's, rich with images that multiply almost infinitely, juxtaposed in unexpected ways, to suggest insights and, more often, unexpected emotions.
Reading Don Mario Carrera's pages will bring us back to encountering him, as we did during the years he spent among us, in personal conversations and telephone conversations. Rereading it (a little at a time each day, "chewing" on his ideas and words), his familiar image will come to mind, and a feeling of gratitude and prayer will arise. The book is dedicated to the Associates of the Pious Union of the Transit of Saint Joseph.