Blessed James Alberione Founder of the Pauline Family
Bl. James Alberione, the Founder of the Pauline Family, was born in San Lorenzo di Fossano (Piedmont), Italy on 4th April 1884. His parents were simple, hard-working people, with a deep-rooted faith that they put into practice. As a young seminarian, James felt that the “hour” of God had struck, and later, as a priest, he took advantage of the new possibilities offered to give the Church a new way of evangelising by using the instruments of communication. As a “prophet” of our times, he carefully observed the ‘signs of the times” and sought to respond to the problems and the needs emerging from the great socio-cultural changes taking place around him in a courageous and open-minded way. Indeed, he transformed every situation into an opportunity to preach the Gospel. From the very beginning, Fr. Alberione took St. Paul as his model, guide, and inspiration. He strove to imitate the Apostle’s zealous missionary spirit and his courage, qualities he firmly believed should shine from the entire Pauline Family. “We have a long way to go,” he said over and over again, “because our parish is the entire world. Make progress in Christ and in the Church! Always strain ahead, like Paul, the “walker of God!” Fr. Alberione participated in Vatican Council II and rejoiced in the official recognition of the Pauline charism through the decree Inter Mirifica, which acknowledges and promotes the Church’s mission of evangelisation with the media. Fr. Alberione died in Rome on 26 November 1971 at the age of 87. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 27th April 2003. Today he continues to live in the memory of each member of his religious Family and in the whole Church.
Thus the young priest set out on an incredible adventure that, over the arch of many decades, led him to initiate innumerable projects. He started in 1914 with a small group of boys and the command to publish Alba's diocesan newspaper, and by the end of his life he had founded five religious congregations, four secular institutes, numerous Catholic publishing houses throughout the world, magazines, a network of media centres that he hoped would serve as sources of light for all who visited them. His original interest in the medium of the press expanded as he realised that the Church of today must be present in the cinema, in television, in the world of music and in every field of human communication furnished by progress. He did not live to see the development of the Internet, but all the languages and instruments of modern communication attracted his interest because he saw them as ways of responding to the social and pastoral problems of his time. Participating in Vatican Council II, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Council documents acknowledge many of the intuitions he had laboured long and hard to concretise.
Blessed James Alberione sa the mission of communication not as a “business,” but as preaching, as an exercise of the ministry of salvation, in which we offer Jesus as a gift to others.