Father to Fathers

By Fr. Enrique Cambon

Dedicating his life to priests, Father Silvano Cola was an intuitive, creative thinker who played a fundamental role in the Focolare community for decades. Aiming for authenticity in life and sincerity in love, he became—and continues to be—a model for many.

Surely one of the greatest joys in the life of Father Silvano Cola, who died February 17, was that day in April 1982 when 7,000 of the diocesan and religious priests and seminarians he lived for gathered at the Vatican.

John Paul II welcomed them to the Paul VI Hall with memorable words, presiding over what one Italian newspaper called the greatest Eucharistic celebration since the Last Supper. The pope’s talk focused on the two “great components of the Gospel message”—unity and the crucified, forsaken Jesus.

When it was Father Silvano’s turn to address those gathered, his words reflected the core of what the priesthood was to him, modeled after the forsaken Jesus. “It is really through his abandonment and death on the cross that Jesus generated the Church,” he said, “taking sin and universal suffering upon himself.”

Father Cola then listed many ecclesial difficulties that he personally saw and embraced in order to build up the Church as well: “Mine, then, are the lacerations between Christian churches; the doctrinal confusion; the lack of communication between priests and bishops, between priests, and between priests and lay people; the misunderstanding of celibacy; the temptation to rationalize; the existential gap between preaching and practice; and the loneliness of priests.”

Then he added, “But all this suffering is Jesus; it’s his suffering; it’s that priestly suffering, which, if accepted, generates the Church!”

The Young Priest

Silvano Cola was born in Camerino in the Italian Marche region on January 22, 1928, the son of a forest ranger. His family soon moved to Turin, and Silvano was ordained a priest in June of 1950 at the age of 22. During his years in the seminary he also studied psychology at the state university.

As a priest he started working in the city’s Boys Town, devoting himself with success to orphaned boys and delinquents. “For four years,” he remembered, “I felt that I had reached a high point of my life.”

A difficult period followed. “I became overcome by the impression that all the theology I had studied in the seminary was absolutely useless for my ministry. The crisis was so bad that I had honestly decided to leave the priesthood.”

In 1954, Father Silvano came across the nascent Focolare community when he met one of Chiara Lubich’s earliest companions, Angelella Ronchetti.

“In a matter of a half hour,” he recalled, “that young woman succeeded in overturning all my clerical certainties. I wasn’t able to sleep for three consecutive nights, and then, to avoid going out of my mind, I decided to find out for myself what this new life was all about.”

He returned to the Focolare house and found Dori Zamboni, another one of Chiara’s earliest companions. “It was an hour of such intense light that I literally felt reborn,” he remembered. “From then on I spent every free moment I had at the Focolare.”

His contact with the Focolare community led him to experience firsthand the presence of Jesus promised to those who live according to a pact of mutual love (see Mt 18:20). At the time he told Vittorio Sabbione, one of the first focolarini and a successful lawyer in Turin:

“I work in the midst of delinquents. I myself am a kind of delinquent and perhaps I will go to hell. But even if I were to go there, I would bring this experience with me.”

Another fundamental part of his experience came when he participated in one of what had become the annual summer gatherings of the Focolare, the Mariapolis, in the Italian Dolomites in 1955.

“There I discovered people of great diversity living as one,” he commented. “They had come solely to love and that allowed one to experience the Church as the icon of the Trinity.”

Father Figure

“You all know with what tireless dedication he took upon himself the responsibility for the priests connected to the Movement and the whole world of priests,” wrote Chiara Lubich when she sent word to Focolare communities around the world of Father Silvano’s passing. “Having loved them, he loved them to the end.”

In the summer of 1963, with the consent of Turin’s bishops, Fr. Cola moved to the Focolare’s headquarters near Rome to be at the service of diocesan priests who lived the spirituality of unity.

Those were years of exponential growth and development for the priests’ branch of the Focolare Movement. He followed the priests with great care and love through letters, trips, conferences and conventions. An entire book could not describe what he did for them during these years.

In 1966 Chiara Lubich and Fr. Pasquale Foresi inaugurated the Priests’ School in Grottaferrata (it was later relocated to Loppiano, near Florence). The courses in spirituality and life offered there gave thousands of diocesan priests and seminarians practical training in the lifestyle of unity, helping them discover or rediscover the Church as communion, as defined by Vatican II, with their bishops, fellow priests and parish communities.

Also in 1966, Chiara founded the Parish Movement, and Father Silvano, assisted by Fr. Giò Aruanno, guided its first steps. Radiating the spirituality of unity in the parishes, they saw the blossoming of parish communities around the world that had all the traits of the first Christian communities.

In 1968, during a deep crisis in the seminaries, Chiara confided to Father Silvano her desire to help. As a result, the Focolare began to spiritually support young seminarians. The Gens Movement, made up of diocesan seminarians who live the spirituality of unity, began. (The name is short for a “new generation of seminarians.”)

Silvano was truly a man of dialogue. Following John Paul II’s historic 1998 meeting with ecclesial movements and new communities in St. Peter’s Square, he and Vale Ronchetti were tapped to promote communion and dialogue with different movements within the Church. His untiring work and dedication produced many fruitful relationships between the Focolare and founders and leaders of different communities throughout the world.

His Legacy

While difficult to summarize, Father Silvano’s legacy can best be described through the verses of his much-loved New Testament, especially considering the words of St. Paul, “So that you became a model for all the believers …” (1 Ts 1:7). This phrase was suggested to him by Chiara Lubich as a personal Word of Life to live by.

Father Silvano aimed at living an authentic Gospel-based life, on being a total gift of self to others with sincere love, with respect for others, with patience in waiting for people to grow and mature. For this reason many priests, lay people, believers and non-believers, youth and adults, consider him their role model.

He also leaves the 22 books he wrote, from the first translation of the letters of St. Jerome in four volumes, to biographies of the Fathers of the Church, and stories of saints for young readers. One book he called “theology for housekeepers,” for its easily understandable style. He wrote countless articles for newspapers and magazines.

Father Silvano was indeed a multifaceted person, known for his intellectual openness of mind. He was intuitive and creative. He deeply felt the pain of humanity and of the Church and worked at finding solutions to fit the times. His search for answers, however, always began with the Gospel, his priority.

Fr. Enrique Cambon is an Argentinean theologian at the Focolare’s headquarters near Rome.