by Rino Cammilleri
Father Serafino Tognetti, already superior general of the Community of the Sons of God (founded by Don Divo Barsotti), in the presentation to the book we speak of, writes that today as today also good and motivated people who attend sacraments and strive to be Good Christians, are "disgraced and scandalized" when they hear of families planning numerous children.
"Usually at the announcement of the arrival of the eldest grandparents and uncles celebrate, on the arrival of the second also, with less enthusiasm; At the announcement of the third one begins to worry, to the fourth one rebuke, if the fifth arrives despair, if they announce sixth, the bride and groom are considered irresponsible, crazy, deprived of reason and heart.
In the case of Septimius and Licia, today, at the announcement of the twenty-first son they would call the neurosis and they would be taken away with the jacket. " And who are Simius and Lydia? One of their children is best known, the ultra-eighteenth-century Stefano Maria Manelli, founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception. These two parents, who are in the process of beatification, have dedicated a book Giuseppe Brienza: Philosophy of the Life of the Servants of God, Licia and Settimio Manelli (Giuliano Ladolfi Editore, pp. 70, € 10).
Once it was said that God loves numerous families, and it was also said that they were fruitful providers of religious vocations. On the ancient example of the saints. Father Tognetti remembers, for example, that St. Catherine of Siena had a twin brother and that his mother, Lapa Mummy, had baked in all twenty-four ramps. And in the house of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, were not the children eighteen? Nor is it a case that once prolific families have strong religious motives.
For example, at Manelli's house, the evening was reciting the Rosary, which Mama Licia recited holding a piece of paper in her arms, and her father, Septimius (a name that in turn indicates a considerable number of brothers) on her knees. Though graduate (rare thing at the time) and teacher. Here is a reminder of those who remain forever in a child's mind: the dad who says the kneeling rosary. Question: What did your father leave, a villa with pool? A bank account with many zeros? No: faith.
They married July 15, 1926, Settimio and Licia, and never imagined ending candidates for altars like Martin's spouses (Santa Teresina's parents), Beltrame Quattrocchi, Gheddo, Amendolagine, and Bernardini. Settimio (1886-1978) and Licia (1907-2004) were Franciscan tertiaries and spiritual children of Padre Pio. One of their children, Stephen Mary, from a convent Franciscan priest came out of the order to found the Franciscans of the Immaculate, whom she joined immediately after a female branch.
It is the religious family that has known, more than anything else, a tumultuous growth and an intercontinental expansion of everything. I will, by 2013, have been subjected to the Vatican by a police station, a measure that has made (and continues to be) debated and whose contours are not yet clear. But we know that God does not abandon the "Catholic rabbits" and their bows, so the last word is not yet called.