I first met Communion and Liberation in 2004. I had been a priest for two years and was sent for further studies in Rome, specifically to earn a Licentiate and Doctorate in moral Theology. I needed to learn Italian or to improve my Italian, so I went to Verbania and stayed at Il Chiostro, a diocesan hotel in the Diocese of Novara. There was a chapel where I offered Mass in Italian each day. I did so at the request of Don Eraldo de Agostini. He was in charge of six or seven churches, as well as the chapel. One evening he returned to the hotel and told me that he loved Bob Dylan, but he didn’t know any English and had no idea what he was saying. He asked if I could translate Bob Dylan into Italian for him. I laughed and said, “We Americans can’t understand Bob Dylan’s English either!” I asked if he had subtitles for the video, and when he put them on, I was able to do the translation. He said, “As your reward, I will give you three books in English. I can’t read English either!” He gave me three books – the Percorso: The Religious Sense, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and Why the Church?

This was my introduction to the movement. He went on to explain his own conversion story. He had been a businessman. He was set to inherit his father’s company and was engaged to be married, but inside, he felt empty. He had been raised as a Catholic but had not been practicing. Then, he put on the television, around the time of the Meeting at Rimini, and he saw a broadcaster interviewing a young woman who was happy and smiling. The interviewer asked, “Why are you young people so happy?” She responded, “because we have communion with Christ and each other. I have real friendships.” The priest told me that it was at that moment, he realized what was missing in his life – a relationship with Christ and the Church. That was the moment of his conversion and encounter. He returned to Mass and the Church, broke off his engagement, renounced his inheritance, and became a priest.

When I returned to Rome, I lived with the other American priests at the Casa Santa Maria, not far from the Trevi Fountain and the Biblicum/Gregorian University. The superior of the house was Msgr. Steven Raica, now the Bishop of Birmingham in Alabama. He, too, was familiar with the movement and the writings of Msgr. Giussani, and through him, I became, through casual conversations, familiar with the main ideas of Giussani and CL.

When I returned to the United States in 2008, I was appointed as the dean of theology and professor of moral theology at the seminary in Cincinnati. I was also assisting an 83 year old priest at his parish. One Sunday, I found him speaking with a young, Italian, married couple – Marco and Simona. They had a new baby, Tommaso. The elderly priest was mixing Latin and Italian together, but my Italian was reasonably good. As they began to speak, they kept using words like “encounter,” “communion,” “to keep something in front of you,” etc. Finally, I asked, “Are you part of CL?” Their jaws dropped open. They said, “you are the first priest in Ohio to have even heard of CL as far as we know!” We became fast friends. Subsequently, I would baptize their next five children and become the confirmation sponsor for Tommaso. We began a small School of Community, first meeting in people’s homes and later at the seminary.

Our group in Cincinnati remained very small, but in 2014, I was named the administrator of the Italian parish in Cincinnati, while carrying on with my duties at the seminary. Now, we had a public space where the School of Community could be held. In Christmas 2014, a new family – Tommaso and Margherita – moved to Cincinnati, along with their three children. I had them bring the Bambino Gesù to place in the presepio that Christmas, and we became close friends. They were in the movement and drew others, including some Americans to our School of Community. Little by little, we grew and began to hold the Advent and Lenten retreats with those from Indianapolis and Evansville. In February 2016, Father Richard Veras came to my parish to preach the Exercises, but it was around that time that I received the news that I was being transferred to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington.

I left Cincinnati and my friends in CL to discover the communities in Washington. Occasionally, I would go to the School of Community Kensington. I was able to meet the priests of the Fraternity of St. Charles along with some of the Memores Domini. Archbishop (now Cardinal) Pierre was close to the movement, and we would hold fundraisers for the New York Encounter at the Nunciature. He would speak regularly at the Encounter and even addressed the Meeting in Rimini one year. He had come to know the movement first in Geneva but especially in Uganda. He found Giussani’s work on education to be groundbreaking. Around that time, Father Carron’s book, Disarming Beauty, was published, and so he and I had some good private conversations about the book. All the while, my conversations with the Nuncio confirmed that Giussani’s line of thinking was just what the Church needed today.

As the years went by, my appreciation for the movement and for Don Giussani grew. When I returned to be a parish priest in Cincinnati at the end of 2019, I became pastor of a parish with a school. I decided with my CL friends to hold a book study on The Risk of Education. 70 people enrolled for the book study, which, unfortunately, was interrupted by the pandemic. Our School of Community met virtually during the pandemic, and then we opened it to members of the parish, some of whom joined. We grew so rapidly that a second group was formed on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. During the pandemic, we managed to host the Via Crucis virtually, with nearly 200 people joining. With small steps, we were exposing more and more people to the charism of the movement, eventually celebrating the Mass with the Archbishop on February 22 and organizing the Via Crucis on the university campus. Then I was named Bishop of Columbus and received episcopal ordination on May 31, 2022.

I chose Veni per Mariam as my motto, as a way of honoring Father Giussani and CL which has affected my spirituality and my approach to education and evangelization. Here in Columbus, our school of community is small but growing, meeting regularly on the campus of the Ohio State University. The Executive Director, Fr. Adam, is a friend of the movement. I have been privileged to continue to preach the Lenten and Advent retreats, despite the many demands of the episcopal ministry. The Columbus CL group, as a charitable work, distributes food to the hungry at the “back Door Ministry” at the Cathedral of St. Joseph. This past year two CLU students came to Columbus and had a beautiful experience. In the movement, we want to rediscover and preserve the charism – not preserve it in a rigid, petrified way – but to live the joy of the encounter with Jesus Christ, to live the joy of being a disciple with others and for others. We are privileged to be called, that is, sent, and to have the opportunity to live our communion as we carry out what our mission demands.

My life and my ministry have been blessed by CL, and my wish is to make known the love of Christ that I have come to experience in and through my friends in the movement.

Bishop Earl Fernandes, Columbus, OH