Because I am a Man

The founder of the Communion and Liberation movement, one of the most widespread movements of the Catholic Church with a presence in ninety countries, the Italian priest Monsignor Luigi Giussani was dedicated to understanding the place of Catholic life and meaning in the contemporary world. The year 2022 marks the centenary of his birth.

Fernando de Haro explores the legacy Father Giussani created as he navigated the twentieth-century collision between religion and secularism. During his formative years, Giussani’s intimate and profound relationship with the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi set in motion the young seminarian’s lifelong quest to discover the meaning and value of existence. As a high school teacher in the 1950s, and a university professor beginning in the mid-1960s, Giussani encountered and challenged the worldview of a generation of students who dismissed the problem of God as outdated and embraced the secularism of the postwar period and the Marxism of 1968. Recognizing the theological issues posed by secularization, the priest refined his vision of Catholicism and instilled his values in the founding of the Communion and Liberation movement.

Because I Am a Man recounts Giussani’s confrontation with secularization and his blossoming understanding of what it is to live a life of faith within Catholic Church.