Communione e Liberazione

Communione e Liberazione (CL; “Communion and Liberation”) is one of the new religious movements that appeared within Italian Catholicism during the second half of the 20th century. Like most movements born in the same period, CL does not follow a particular Italian Church strategy and has developed at the margins of the ecclesiastical system.

The origins of the movement may be traced to the work of Luigi Giussani, a priest born in the province of Milan in 1922. His education was particularly influenced by the spirit of pastoral Catholicism, which was an active force in Brianza during the 1930s, and the tradition of spiritual renewal that came from social Catholicism and from the moderate modernist tradition that developed in the early 20th century.

During the 1950s, Don ...