The passing away of don Giacomo Tantardini

The editorial office of the monthly magazine 30Days in the Church and in the world, directed by Giulio Andreotti, announces the death of Don Giacomo Tantardini, which occurred on the evening of Thursday 19 April 2012, in Rome

Don Giacomo during the presentation of the book, published by <I>30Giorni</I>, <I>Montini e Agostino. Sant’Agostino negli appunti inediti di Paolo VI</I> [Montini and Augustine. St Augustine in the unpublished notes of Paul VI], in Padua, 25 November 2008 [© Franco Capovilla]

Don Giacomo during the presentation of the book, published by 30Giorni, Montini e Agostino. Sant’Agostino negli appunti inediti di Paolo VI [Montini and Augustine. St Augustine in the unpublished notes of Paul VI], in Padua, 25 November 2008 [© Franco Capovilla]

The editorial office of the monthly magazine 30Days in the Church and in the world, directed by Giulio Andreotti, announces the death of Don Giacomo Tantardini, which occurred on the evening of Thursday 19 April 2012, in Rome. A priest, the soul of our magazine along with Senator Andreotti who has directed it since 1993, Don Giacomo Tantardini was born in Barzio (Lecco) on 27 March 1946. Baptized on 31March of that year, he was confirmed by Blessed Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster on 7 July 1953 and received his First Communion on 27 May 1954. He studied theology at the Theological Faculty of the Milan Seminary of Venegono. He met Don Luigi Giussani and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Giovanni Colombo, Archbishop of Milan, on 27 June 1970. In the early ’seventies he obtained the Licentiate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He carried out his pastoral work, especially among students of the University of Rome. Incorporated into the diocese of Rome, he was pastor of St Margaret Mary Alacoque at Tor Vergata and chaplain at the University of Tor Vergata from 1983 to 1997. He taught at the St Pius V Free University in Rome, at the University of Padua and at the St Bonaventure Pontifical Theological Faculty – the Seraphicum – in Rome.

In the early ’eighties, at the request of young people who were converting to Christianity, he gathered in a small booklet the simplest prayers of the Christian life and everything that helps make a good confession. The little booklet entitled Who prays is saved, translated into the major languages, is distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies throughout the world. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote the presentation on 18 February 2005.

In 2010 Don Giacomo celebrated forty years of priesthood. To commemorate the event, Don Alfredo Comi, pastor of Barzio since the days when Don Giacomo was ordained priest, wrote to him inviting him, on 1 August of that year, to his native town.
We publish Don Giacomo’s letter of response

Rome, June 2010

Dear Don Alfredo,

I thank you, happy with the invitation to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of my priestly ordination in Barzio, the first Sunday in August, when our parish celebrates the feastday of Our Lady of the Rosary.

How many memories overflowing with emotion and gratitude to the Lord the feastday of Our Lady of the Rosary renews for me, with the evening procession through the streets of the town! Those feastdays and the processions were perhaps the happiest and most beautiful moments of my childhood. How beautiful in the eyes of a child was the completely golden image of the Madonna on display in the church and carried in procession!

Only recently did I hear from my sisters that my mother, immediately after my baptism, had offered to the Madonna, before that image, her first son made, just an instant beforehand, the son of God. How many tears of gratitude that gesture of my mother bestowed on my life.

I would like to express the entire path of these forty years of priesthood in the words of St Ambrose: “Omnia igitur habemus in Christo, omnia Christus est nobis / In Christ we have everything, Christ is everything for us”.

These words I learned by heart in my seminary and already then they seemed to me so beautiful. It was the journey of the years, with the encounters of grace, the renewed mercy for the poor sins, the miracles, that made so real, so beautiful, so close to my poor heart the reality itself that those words suggest.

Thus, “in praise and glory of His grace with which he graced us in His beloved Son” (St Paul, Letter to the Ephesians 1, 6), I transcribe the words of St. Ambrose:

“In Christ we have everything.

Each one come close to him: those sick because of sin, those who are as if nailed down by their own concupiscence, those who are imperfect but eager to move forward with intense prayer, those who have already grown in many virtues.

We are all God’s and Christ is everything for us.

If you want to heal your wounds, He is a doctor; if you’re burning with fever, He is the fountain; if you find yourself overwhelmed by guilt, He is justice; if you need help, He is strength; if you’re afraid of death, He is life; if you desire paradise, He is the way; if you flee from the darkness, He is light; if you seek food, He is nourishment. ‘So enjoy and see how sweet is the Lord. Happy the man who hopes in Him’ (Psalm 33, 9)”.

With renewed feelings of gratitude and esteem,

Don Giacomo

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