Testimonial Angelo Cardinal Comastri
Dear ones, I received with great joy your decisión to gather memories and testimonies on the life of Father Giovanni Salerno.
Dear ones, I received with great joy your decisión to gather memories and testimonies on the life of Father Giovanni Salerno.
I was able to meet him when I was a parish priest in Porto Stefano, Province of Grosseto, Italy. Thanks to a wonderful missionary group, I tried to open the parish to the horizons of the world to be able to fully breathe the mystery of the Catholic Church that embraces rich and poor to heal them through the Love of Jesus.
The meeting with Father Giovanni Salerno affected me deeply. We all meet so many people daily, but these meetings usually don’t leave traces in our souls. Many people are dark glass that don’t let the Light of Jesus pass through. The meeting with Father Giovanni Salerno affected me the same way as my meeting with Saint John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
I was impressed by the deep harmony between the feelings of Mother Teresa and those of Father Giovanni. Mother Teresa told me several times, “I am not a social worker. I am a believer and seek to transmit the Love of Jesus to everyone I meet.” Father Giovanni told me the same. “I am a servant of the poor to bring Jesus among the poorest, because only Jesus heals poverty in all its expressions and in all its depth.”
I remember I asked him, “Then, do I have to come with you?”
I was impressed by the profound harmony between Mother Teresa's feelings and Father Giovanni's feelings.
We need people like Father Giovanni Salerno, like Mother Teresa, like John Paul II
He answered, “You stay where you are. In the rich countries there is a worse poverty than in the Third World. Spiritual poverty is spreading in developed countries, a poverty lacking ideals, the poverty of insaciable selfishness and constant unhappiness.” Mother Teresa told me the same, “You may find Calcutta anywhere. In poor countries you find people malnourished in body but with beautiful souls. In rich countries you find people well cared for in body but with devastated and incredibly ugly souls. Here there is so much need for Jesus and of the true Love that only He can teach and give.”
We have so much need of people like Father Giovanni Salerno and Mother Teresa and John Paul II. At the end of WYD 2002 in Toronto, John Paul II said, “Don’t be like snails that only leave behind a trail of slime. It only takes a little rain to wash it away. Dear young people, make your lives a work of art. Give them, spend them to do good and leave an impression behind you and you will be happy.”
It is a very current teaching that Father Giovanni Salerno has left us.
The meeting with Father Giovanni Salerno had a profound impact on me.
