Father Andrea Gasparino was a man of great prayer, abundant and of high quality. Hours and hours on his knees. Then many hours of service.
He trusted in Providence and in the Madonna, to whom he entrusted all his initiatives. He was concerned with teaching how to pray, because he believed that those who pray well, also learn to love and serve.
The annual prayer school, which thousands of young people have attended, rediscovering adoration, confession, Gospel meditation, and heart prayer, is very well known.
Inspired by Charles De Foucauld, Father Gasparino lived and allowed many people to experience the Desert. Every year he would retreat with his consecrated members for 40 days of prayer and reflection, during which he prepared all the homilies and prayers for the year, including the wonderful Good Friday catechesis on the Prodigal Son, with which he brought hundreds of young people to confession during the Easter Triduum. He and the other priests of the fraternity heard confessions for 10-12 hours a day on those occasions.
At his Children’s City, where he welcomed orphans and where the poor, families, and the sick are still welcomed today, there has been continuous adoration since 1959 without interruption. It is the source of the graces he witnessed.
His catecheses are still in high demand on the web and in his books today. His campaign against rote prayer has helped many to put love back into prayer, that is, to stop saying words and think about what they were praying, putting the heart and concrete situations at the center of prayer.
We can say that even today Father Andrea Gasparino teaches many how to pray and helps them grow in experiencing prayer not as a formality, but as an encounter with God who cares for us, heals us, listens to us, speaks to us. The “heart prayer”, the “prayer of simplicity” of which he was a master, are cornerstones for all those who knew him.
“Give God the joy of listening to Him,” he used to say; even today, listening to Gasparino is a joy that leads to God.
Paolo Botti
BIOGRAPHY of FATHER ANDRE GASPARINO
“Prayer and love achieve the impossible.” This phrase is written on the tomb of Father Andrea Gasparino, missionary priest and master of the Spirit (April 7, 1923 – September 26, 2010). After the war, he took to heart the social and economic poverty of many orphans living on the streets. After his priestly ordination in the Seminary of Cuneo in 1947, he served pastorally at the parish of Roccavione, beginning to gather boys in precarious situations. On October 7, 1951, he gathered these boys in the “Città dei Ragazzi” (Children’s City) in Cuneo. In 1955, consecrated sisters joined the community’s work. In the 1960s, Father Gasparino’s dream came true with the expansion of missionary activity in the world’s poorest countries. The first mission was in Brazil, then in Asia, in Africa, and in Eastern Europe, such as Russia and Albania. He opened other missions in Korea, Madagascar, and then in Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Hong Kong.
Father Gasparino led the prayer school for young people at the “Città dei Ragazzi” for over 50 years, where generations of young people learned from him a lifestyle that was essential, coherent, rigorous, imbued with prayer and witness. He is the founder of the Contemplative Missionary Movement “P. De Foucauld”.
The fraternities of the Movement are small monastic communities of brothers and sisters who live among the poor in the slums, among the shantytown dwellers, in leper colonies, sharing the lives of the poor and witnessing to the primacy of prayer.
Currently, the Movement is present in Europe (Italy, England, Russia, Albania); in Africa (Madagascar, Kenya, Ethiopia); in Asia (Bangladesh, Hong Kong); and in Latin America (Brazil).
The training center of the Movement is in Cuneo (Italy).
From his spiritual and missionary experience, numerous books have been born (the latest released is “La preghiera di semplicità” – The prayer of simplicity), which are now widely known and appreciated throughout the world. They offer a method for learning to pray and to practice the so-called “prayer of the heart,” that is, deep prayer in which man and God meet and love each other in silence. In 1990, official recognition was granted by the Holy See as the “Contemplative Missionary Movement P. de Foucauld.” Today, the Community consists of about ten priests and 100 consecrated brothers and sisters, in dozens of fraternities scattered around the world.
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