In the early afternoon of May 13, the month of flowers, Don Luigi Alippi, emeritus Superior General of the Servants of Charity, third successor of Blessed Luigi Guanella, left his earthly home to meet with the confreres who had preceded him in the sign of faith and slept the sleep of peace. He had reached the age of the "strongest", according to the psalmist and only a few months of illness prepared him for the great step into the House of Divine Providence in Como. The funeral, in the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, was celebrated by the then Superior General Fr Pietro Pasquali surrounded by about eighty priests with the unanimous participation of brothers and sisters of the two Congregations, collaborators and friends of the Work. The rite, even if muffled by the sadness of the farewell times, comforted the children present with the certainty that the Divine Redeemer, in the spirit emphasized by the Easter liturgy of those days, will make the confrere who believed in life share in the glory of heaven and hoped in him.
From the native town of Linzanico di Badia Lariana Luigino, accompanied by his uncle don Salvatore, one of the first and most faithful priests of don Guanella, arrived at the Casa Divina Provvidenza in Como, curious to get to know that priest, don Guanella, of whom he had heard so much talk at home.
He immediately had the privilege of knowing the holy Founder, receiving his paternal blessing, listening to his inspired word and also, shortly after, savoring the bitterness of his illness and sadly mourning his painful death. Luigino was present at the funeral of his beloved priest: he will remember the plebiscitary tribute, almost a triumph, that the saint received in all the streets of Como, crossed by the coffin on its way to the Cathedral for the funeral rite. Although still small in age, the "dear fatherly image" was imprinted on his soul and a filial love for him will accompany him throughout his life.
Fourteen-year-old Luigi Alippi, with a group of twenty-one aspirants from high school, left Como on 29 July 1916 for the Student House of the Servants of Charity, the Istituto S. Gerolamo di Fara Novarese, greeted by all as the first gift from the dead Blessed Founder for only a year. With them were Don Aurelio Bacciarini, the new Superior General and future Bishop of Lugano, and Don Leonardo Mazzucchi, who had the task, as first rector, of juridically and spiritually organizing the seminary, as well as being in charge of the students' studies. In that environment, which stood on a pleasant hill, the cleric Alippi, clad in the cassock, as was the custom at the time, completed his humanistic courses from 1916 to 1921, dividing his time between prayer, study and work in the luxuriant vineyard, under the paternal and strong government of don Mazzucchi, the sweet and enlightened spiritual direction of don Ramiro Lucca, the fraternal vigilance of the assistant, the cleric Michele Bacciarini. From Fara Novarese he went to the Istituto S. Luigi d'Albizzate for the Novitiate and for the first Profession. Having completed his military service, according to the laws in force at the time which did not exempt priests from the obligation of military service, strengthened in spirit by a bitter and painful experience for his spiritual life, in contact with often vulgar and blasphemous comrades, he returned to the community strengthened in the will to follow the path undertaken. In the Mother House of Como he was an educator of orphans and the abandoned with commendable passion and dedication, despite the commitment to study theology in the diocesan seminary. He was a priest consecrated by His Excellency Mons. Adolfo Pagani.
The life of the Servant of Charity is regulated and marked by the spiritual testament of don Guanella, summarized in the binomial «To pray and to suffer». The specific implementation of suffering is daily work, as the Founder wrote in the Regulations of 1910: «It is desired that the Servants of Charity be maximal in the exercise of mortification by shouldering and bending their backs to a gentle but continuous work of the duties own". The young priest Don Luigi Alippi translated it faithfully into practice in the Blessed Bernardino Tomitano Agricultural Colony for orphaned boys in Vellai di Feltre (1928-1930); in the Pia Casa S. Giuseppe for poor young and elderly people in Gozzano (1930-1932), with the duties of superior.
In Rome he was still superior of the St. Joseph shelter for the elderly and subnormal, for whose benefit he began the construction of the Pius XII pavilion in 1939. He spent the stormy period of the Second World War partly in the Shelter of Via Aurelia Antica, partly in the Parish of S. Giuseppe al Trionfale from 1942 to 1944. Once Rome was freed from the German occupation, he was again superior of the incipient Institute of S. Giuseppe for orphans at Monte Sacro in the year 1944-1945. After the war, he was transferred to the direction of the S. Gaetano Institute for boys and craftsmen in Milan from 1945 to 1946, the year in which he was elected Superior General of the Congregation of the Servants of Charity. Providence had prepared Don Luigi for ever greater responsibilities, who had provided proof of commendable administrative and moral skills in the various offices entrusted to him by his superiors during the first eighteen years of priesthood.
It is therefore no wonder that, in the VII General Chapter, celebrated in the Novitiate House of Barza d'Ispra, in mid-July 1946, Fr Alippi was elected III Superior General of the Congregation of the Servants of Charity. Don Leonardo Mazzucchi, who for twenty-two years had governed the still young male Congregation with singular wisdom, a firm hand and absolute fidelity to the Guanellian spirit, consolidating and multiplying its works in Italy and abroad, was delighted that this onerous task passed into the hands of a priest with a youthful temper and an adamantine will. Don Alippi humbly and simply accepted that service of supreme authority in the Institute, trusting in Providence and in the protection of the holy Founder. Soon he was able to reveal his abilities and his cautious dynamism. Having visited the houses of Italy and Switzerland, he was concerned with the Works of Argentina and Paraguay, now that it was once again possible to sail the seas. He proposed, confident and at times, one might say, daring, to develop the existing ones and to bring the Don Guanella Work to other countries of Latin America as well. As, in fact, happened for Brazil and Chile in 1947.
In the spring of 1948, Fr Alippi undertook his first journey across the ocean to meet and encourage those confreres, visit the institutes and parishes that had been functioning for years, set up the recently founded houses with the prospect of new ones, and flank them with apostolic schools for the local vocations. The transatlantic journeys were repeated in 1950, 1954, 1957 with not slight discomforts of climate, environmental habits, means of transport, but with ever more encouraging horizons of work for the birth and growth of new Guanellian works. In those twelve years of government, also in post-war Italy, the Guanellian institutes multiplied and the old ones were renewed and expanded:
the S. Gerolamo Student House in Fara Novarese was transferred to Anzano del Parco;
the theological seminary found its headquarters in Chiavenna, apostolic schools were opened in several regions;
the Mother House of Como was partly renovated in a modern way, partly built from scratch.
In love for the Founder and in the assiduous commitment to preserve what referred to him, don Alippi restored don Guanella's paternal house in Fraciscio and, on the hill of Guldera, placed a group of bronze statues reproducing the apparition of the Madonna to little Luigi on the day of his First Communion. Providence also opened the doors to the United States of North America, where Don Alippi, who arrived there by chance in 1957, encouraged by the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, began negotiations with the Archbishops of Philadelphia and Detroit for two foundations for subnormal children.
In the 1958th General Chapter of 1958, Fr Alippi entrusted the torch of fidelity and the heavy burden of governing the Congregation to younger hands, while remaining, in the following twelve years, wise counselor and shrewd superior of the Mother House of Como from 1964 to 25. In the vicinity of the beatification of Don Guanella, which he always fervently promoted, he had a monumental altar erected in the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart to place the urn that would have kept the venerated body of the Founder. With great joy he participated in the solemn rite of beatification on 1964 October 1965 in Rome in St. Peter's Basilica, and animated the celebrations in Como in the Mother House and in the Cathedral. It was, again, thanks to him that the urn of the new Blessed had a triumphal pilgrimage in the city of Como and in the villages of the lake and of the Valtellina up to Fraciscio and Gualdera in the months of May and June of XNUMX.
From 1965 to 1985 he held the position of chaplain in the Blessed Luigi Guanella House, managed by the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, and rector of the annexed church of Sant'Ambrogio ad Nemus. During that period, a double trip to Spain for the study and possible implementation of an Apostolic College in Aguilar de Campoo and to the United States to define a new agreement with the Archbishop of Philadelphia for the prestigious Don Guanella School in Springfield for the handicapped psychics. Lastly, when the years were now beginning to weigh on him and his spirit felt the negative beats of the always strong-willed but no longer agile will, in 1970 he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was the time of grace when he was able to read, in Nazareth, in the registers of the Franciscan Fathers, the annotation left by Don Guanella on the occasion of the 1902 pilgrimage, in which he wrote: «I leave part of my heart in Nazareth and in the East almost a hope for a future presence of the Work in the land of Jesus».
From then on Don Alippi tenaciously advocated a foundation of the Servants of Charity in Nazareth. In 1975 the "Holy Family House" will be built for the education of the handicapped in a vast building, received on commodate from the Franciscan Fathers of the Holy Land. Don Alippi spent the last fifteen years of his life no longer among the worries and commitments that had accompanied him throughout his life but in the tranquility of his spirit, devoted to prayer which had always been the inspiring source of his decisions . He suffered greatly from the various ills that undermined him: he had the strength to mask everything with serenity and he overcame loneliness by dedicating himself to occupations congenial to him such as making miniature nativity scenes which he gave to friends and benefactors but he also found the time to listen all the pains that the old women, bruised like him, wanted to tell. A new and different Don Luigi, mature and ready, was about to leave his earthly home.
His mortal remains sleep the sleep of peace in the funerary chapel of the Servants of Charity in the Monumental Cemetery of Como awaiting the final resurrection. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord... They will rest from their labors because works follow them" (Ap 14, 13).