Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
“There is someone who loves you even before you deserve it”. This phrase has always served as a motto for Giovanni Merlini, a priest of the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood born in 1795 and beatified, after a process that lasted more than a century, less than two weeks ago in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
Extremely dedicated to the missions of his people, Father Giovanni was always a prudent counselor and messenger of peace. Frequently disobeying the orders of the papal legate, he never condemned or attacked anyone during his homilies. Not even those who, through their criminal activities, disturbed the order and internal peace of the Papal State. According to Merlini, violent repression was never the right way to solve the enormous problems that the whole of central Italy was facing in the aftermath of the invasion of Napoleonic troops. The peaceful words of the priest from the Alps would reach everyone, including the most hardened criminals who were sowing terror in the countryside and cities of the Italian peninsula. What’s more, some of these bandits would even go so far as to write a letter to the Pope, through Father Giovanni, asking for forgiveness. Exactly two centuries after this historic letter, dated 1825, Father Giovanni Merlini was finally proclaimed blessed.
Presided over by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the beatification liturgy took place not in Spoleto, Merlini’s hometown, nor in Albano, a city of the Castelli Romani where he lived for several years, but in the cathedral of eternal Rome, the Lateran, where Merlini now honours one of his altars.
A missionary in the lands of the Papal States, Merlini was accused several times of collusion with outlaws and of disobedience to the Church he served. But his holiness – latent within him from an early age – lay precisely in his way of living with “a disconcerting interior freedom”. Merlini trusted completely in the supreme “will of God”. And this “freedom of action” led him to undertake great projects, sometimes a little crazy. The “challenge” he issued to the Pope when he left Rome due to the 1848 insurrection is an example. He said: “Your Holiness, if you wish to return to Rome, proclaim the feast of the Most Precious Blood throughout the Universal Church. If you do so, you will have the possibility of returning to the Eternal City before the celebration of this feast.” Pius IX did not guarantee this, but he told him that he would think about it. And, in fact, on 30 June, the eve of the feast of the Most Precious Blood, the battle took place that would, in fact, dictate the end of the Jacobin-inspired Roman Republic. On 10 August 1849, faithful to the promise made in Gaeta, Pius IX issued the bull Redempti sumus, which included the feast of the Most Precious Blood in the liturgical calendar on the first Sunday of July. Today, as we know, this feast day is fused with the solemnity of Corpus Christi.
All of Father Merlini’s initiatives arose in the context of his mission to “retransmit the love of God in the lands of the Papal States”, where the population was large. Everyone there knew who Jesus Christ was and what he had done, but that was not the most important thing. They still needed to know how much this Jesus loved them, to the point that he had given his life for each one of them, even criminals.
With Saint Gaspar del Bufalo, founder of the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood, Father Merlini undertook the construction of several mission houses in the territories of the Papal States. Saint Gaspar had chosen him for this mission not only because of his practical sense, but also because he was an architect by profession. Many of these houses were built outside the inhabited areas to facilitate encounters and dialogue with outlaws. Our Father Giovanni Merlini often spoke to them, and they listened to him. Often, in the evening, when everyone was returning home, Merlini would offer them water, indiscriminately; and he never used an armed escort.
It was precisely this way of doing things that led Pius IX to want him as an advisor. And to make the proposal, the Holy Father did not summon him to Rome. He went himself to Albano, where he found him in a chicken coop feeding the birds. Tasks that, in the congregation, were certainly not the responsibility of a high-ranking member. Merlini, in fact, would be elected the third Moderator General of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood in 1847, a position he would hold until his death on January 12, 1873. Under his leadership, the Congregation founded by Saint Gaspar del Bufalo took on the structural form that we know today.
Father Giovanni Merlini, a missionary in the lands of the Pope, is also the first blessed of the Jubilee 2025, dedicated to the theme of hope. This is also a strong message. As Father Giovanni reminds us, we should not take anything for granted and there is no situation in which we live in which God cannot teach us something.
“Let us also invoke his intercession ercession as we pray for peace in Ukraine, in the Middle East and throughout the world”, concludes Pope Francis, in the evocation he made on the occasion of his beatification.
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