For a Better World

High in the Alban hills near Rome, a new war college held its first sessions last week. The war for which its officers will train is the war against atheism, materialism and sin. Its commanding general is Italy's burning-eyed, hothearted little Jesuit preacher, Father Riccardo Lombardi.

For ten 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).

The 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 in 1870.

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."

The Nine Points. Courses for bishops (10 to 20 at a time) will be held 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 for all.

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."

Point No. 4 underlines the organization of evil and the disorganization of good. "Never before has Satan's banner been raised as Communism raises it today," says Lombardi. Point No. 5 stresses the need for "a Christian rebellion to match the rebellion of the Communists. That 472 million Catholics should continue to do nothing is an intolerable situation." No. 6 stresses that the moment for this Christian rebellion is now. Point No. 7 backs this up with papal authority. Point No. 8 calls for individual rededication, and Point No. 9 is repentance for man's individual and collective sins.

Father Lombardi's better-world movement will eventually branch out into every important Catholic community, with Lombardi-trained instructors gearing the courses to each group and environment. But the light and power will emanate from the cluster of buildings in the hills above Rome, dominated by a circular church equipped with no fewer than 40 marble altars (so that numbers of priests can say their daily Masses with dispatch).

Cold Hands. Here last week the new rector of the institution, spidery young Father Angelo Sappa, presided over a black, grey and white sea of 190 nuns from 39 orders. It was bitter cold, and the boiler broke down, but Theologian Sappa made a parable of it.

"Whenever I asked one of 650 workers who helped to build this center, 'What are you doing?' he would say: 'I am putting in window frames,' or 'I am putting in electric lights.' One of them used to say to me, 'I am making the boiler work.'" Father Sappa smiled and rubbed his icy hands. "But these were only individual objectives. All of them--even the man who didn't make the boiler work--had one greater objective: to make this center work. It is working now--though the boilermaker failed in his individual task--because all the others worked toward a single end . . . the formation of a mystical body wherein all men and women are united."

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