Cardinal Ruini's Testament: "Francis Reopened Wounds"
Cardinal Ruini's testament is a personal reflection on his life, giving thanks to God for his family, vocation, and ministry in the Church.
More than 90% of the sentences are written in the first person singular, with verbs such as ringrazio ('I thank'), confesso ('I confess'), ho cercato ('I have tried'), and sono stato ('I have been') making Ruini the grammatical subject in nearly every sentence. The testament provides a detailed account of his family life, his work as a priest and bishop, his collaborations, and his public importance. A sympathetic reading of his frequent use of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, mine) might suggest that spiritual testaments traditionally belong to an autobiographical and introspective literary genre.
The paragraph that focuses least on himself is the best one, dealing with Pope Francis's pontificate: "I must confess that I find myself in a state of unease, certainly not for personal reasons, but because I struggle to understand certain orientations that seem to me to reopen wounds that, after the Council, had only with difficulty been healed. I humbly ask the Lord to convince me inwardly that the Church is His, and that He Himself takes care of it, beyond our human viewpoints."
Spiritual Testament of Camillo Ruini
Thanksgiving and a request for forgiveness from God and from my brothers and sisters.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I thank You, Lord, for the long life You have given me, for making me a Christian, for the call to the priesthood, and for my many years as a priest and then as a bishop. I thank You for having been, and for still being, so greatly loved — by my parents Francesco and Iolanda, by my sister Donata, by my grandparents Idelberto and Maria, and by my uncle Guido, with whom I lived: their affection gave me strength and security throughout my life. I thank You for my other grandmother Emma, for my aunt and uncle Riccardo and Tina, for my cousin Carlo and his wife Carla, and for my other relatives. I thank You for being loved and cared for with such devotion by my most faithful Pierina, and loved and cared for with great generosity by my secretary Don Mauro, now Bishop of Tivoli, by Mara, who chose to remain at my side even after my term as Cardinal Vicar ended, by Don Nicola, Angela, Claudia of the CEI, and by many other collaborators of mine. And, in domestic life, by Palmizia, Sergio, and Raffaella.
I thank You, Lord, for my friends in Sassuolo, for my parish priest Monsignor Zelindo Pelluti, and for Don Dino Carretti, who guided and accompanied me in embracing my vocation to the priesthood. I thank You for my years of formation at the Capranica College and the Gregorian University, for the superiors, professors, companions, and friends I had there, especially the late Don Osvaldo Ronzon, Don Valerio Massucci, Don Nicola Battarelli, and Don Nicolino Barra. I thank You for my service as priest and teacher in Reggio Emilia, for my bishops Beniamino Socche and, above all, Gilberto Baroni, from whom I received and learned so much, and for the many priests and lay people, men and women across several generations, especially those who remain closest to me even now: from them I received no less than what I sought to give. I thank You for the Second Vatican Council, for having lived it and helped others live it joyfully in Reggio Emilia, and also for giving me the clarity and the strength to oppose post-conciliar deviations.
Then, Lord, when a certain weariness threatened to weigh down my priesthood, You took pity on me and, to my surprise and dismay, called me to the episcopate: it was a grace as great as it was undeserved, a renewal and revitalization of my vocation. From then on, those who pray for me and for my intentions have multiplied, making up for the poverty of my own prayer. From then on, in a short time, I became a public figure, although I always tried to remain a simple person — in that sense, to remain who I was before.
An entirely special grace for me was John Paul II. From the very beginning of his ministry, I saw realized in him what I had vaguely sensed within myself and what Paul VI had already pointed to, amid much resistance and misunderstanding. Yet I never imagined I would become one of his direct collaborators, as I was for more than twenty years, from the autumn of 1984, when the Loreto Conference was being prepared, until his death. In John Paul II I experienced Your presence, Lord; I was able to experience firsthand the union in prayer, the inseparability of prayer, life, and apostolate, the courage of a faith that guides history, and the capacity to love and to forgive. Through my own fault, Lord, I sought to follow his example in what suited my own inclinations, but far less in what would have remedied my gravest shortcomings.
Concretely, in the twenty-two years of my Roman ministry, at the CEI and in the Vicariate, I hope, Lord, that I worked not for personal interests but for the goals entrusted to me and which I shared wholeheartedly: in this way I overcame considerable resistance and hostility, especially at the start, both at the CEI and in the Vicariate. I acknowledge and confess, however, that at times I acted with real harshness, though usually — not always — under a gentle outward form: for this I ask forgiveness of the Lord and of all the people, living and dead, to whom I caused pain. But I must thank You, Lord, for the people with whom I had the joy of working: in particular Monsignor Giovanni Battista Re and Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, the CEI secretaries Monsignor Dionigi Tettamanzi, Monsignor Ennio Antonelli, and Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, the vicegerents of Rome Monsignor Remigio Ragonesi, Monsignor Cesare Nosiglia, Monsignor Luigi Moretti, Annick Johnson, Dino Boffo, Sergio Belardinelli, Vittorio Sozzi, the late Monsignor Giuseppe Cacciari, and Cardinal Angelo Scola — but also a great many others, among them the parish priests of Rome and the directors of the offices of the CEI and the Vicariate: to quite a few of them I have remained attached.
Now I have been emeritus for eight years, and I thank You, Lord, for having given me all this time to prepare for the supreme encounter with You, but I also ask Your forgiveness for having made so little use of this time for that purpose. In truth, I have so far been a very busy emeritus, on account of various assignments I received, and above all because I devoted myself to my passion for study, born in me in adolescence and ever since my constant companion. The subjects I chose — God and life beyond death — by their very nature dispose one toward the encounter with You, and the two books in which I gathered them are meant to be, however modest, a contribution to evangelization. In fact, however, the effort of writing did not favor the freedom of my spirit for prayer.
But the causes of this lack of freedom are above all my sins and the weakness of my response to the Lord's love: these are the things I wish to confess, hoping to scandalize no one, but rather to encourage people to pray for me and to do better than I have done. I confess, first of all, the weakness of my faith. From early childhood I had the gift of faith and said my prayers; faith has accompanied and sustained me ever since, especially in embracing the call to the priesthood. I devoted myself to defending the faith, already as a high-school student, without timidity or fear. I sought through study to deepen its content and its reasons, to put them forward and defend them with passion and conviction. Despite all this, however, in the secrecy of my heart I have always been tempted precisely regarding faith, although, by the grace of God, I do not think I ever gave in to temptation. Concretely, my faith was and remains insufficient to sustain and animate a life that ought to be wholly dedicated to God and to my brothers and sisters. Lord, have mercy on me and strengthen my faith, in this last and decisive stage of my earthly journey.
Virgin Mary, our sweet Mother, intercede that the love of God may fill my heart and grant me true freedom. "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35): this saying of Jesus has always struck me as almost self-evident, a natural inclination — bound up, too, with the fact that I never found myself in need. Thus, thanks to the great generosity of my parents and my sister, for the whole time I was a priest in Reggio I was able to work practically for free. Later I received a great deal of money, but I did not increase the family's assets, devoting what was superfluous instead to helping people in difficulty. Even here, though, I did not put into practice the Lord's invitation to leave everything and follow Him, nor did I give up a standard of living that, while simple, was comfortable.
I have always been a "papist," and I thank the Lord for this, and my formators, in particular the professors of the Gregorian University. After John Paul II, I worked for three years with Benedict XVI, and I thank him with all my heart, also for the affection he continues to show me. When Pope Francis was elected I rejoiced, and, as far as I could, I was immediately one of his supporters. Even today I rejoice and thank him for his extraordinary evangelical zeal. I must confess, however, that I find myself in a state of unease — certainly not for personal reasons, but because I struggle to understand certain directions that seem to me to reopen wounds that, after the Council, had only with difficulty been healed. I humbly ask the Lord to convince me inwardly that the Church is His, and that He Himself takes care of it, beyond our human points of view.
Lord, help me to embrace the small cross of my decline — for now a physical one — and the gradual extinguishing of my role: this is the grace You now give me to prepare myself better for the encounter with You.
Lord, You alone know why You called me; Your love is entirely free, undeserved, and creative. Grant that I may not reject it; forgive me, too, for having already too often evaded and disappointed it. Lord, faithful God, do not grow weary of loving me, of calling me, of converting me. Father rich in mercy, grant to me and to all my brothers and sisters in humanity the grace of final perseverance.
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