Word: lombardi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...twice a year and last about five days. Courses for priests last ten days and are held for groups of 120 to 140. Nuns are kept for seven days, laymen (in two-hour evening sessions only) for four days. But though language and approach vary from group to group, Lombardi has worked out a nine-point program...
...years Father Lombardi, 48, has been a kind of Roman Catholic Billy Graham, firing hearers all over Italy with new zeal. But Father Lombardi believes that the enthusiasm in the crowds he left behind will not last without continuing leadership. To provide that leadership, he set up a new organization: Per un Mondo Migliore (For a Better World...
...Panoramic View. To bring about a better world, says Lombardi. Christianity's leaders-bishops and priests, politicians and professionals, aristocrats and union men-must learn to bring Christianity out of the church and into everyday life. Three years ago he began organizing his training center, and meanwhile he tested his techniques on 3,015 priests, 260 bishops and about 2,000 laymen. Last fall the Pope showed his enthusiasm for the project by visiting the unfinished buildings-leaving the diocese of Rome for the first time any Pope had left it since the pontiffs lost their temporal power...
...Father Lombardi's new institution fills a gap between individual spiritual exercises and large discussion meetings. It takes groups by categories. Priests come together without any overseeing bishop. "It too often happens." says Lombardi, "that at congresses a priest in awe of a bishop won't dare to contradict him. Or if we have a group of bishops, we have no onlooking priests so that bishops need not feel they have to be constrained in what they say or leave unsaid. We get this homogeneous group and bathe it in a supranatural atmosphere...
Point No. 1 poses the question: "What can we do to make a better world?" No. 2 establishes man's collective duty to God as well as his individual one. At No. 3, Father Lombardi reminds listeners that the spiritual should have priority over the mundane. "As matters stand today," says Lombardi, "there is more effort and ingenuity put into selling Coca-Cola than in bringing all souls to sing to God in heaven...