RAVENNA: 14th January 2005 --  Ravenna, Italy, may well now become a centre of the movement to beatify and canonise the Venerable Monsignor Vincent Cimatti, favourite son of nearby Faenza.  Cimatti, who died in 1965 in Japan, spent little of his life in and around either Faenza or Ravenna, since he spent most of his active life as a Salesian in Japan.  But today there is a growing movement focused around the area of his origins and headed up by Mrs Letizia Faggioli, a Salesian Cooperator from Ravenna.

    This has come about since the visit of the postulator for the cause, based in Japan, Fr. Gaetano Compri, himself a native of Faenza.  Fr Compri has spoken in both Faenza and Ravenna in recent days, bringing his own enthusiasm for the cause not only to Salesians and Salesian families in the region but to the people and the Church at large.

    A postulator is the person designated to follow up a cause for canonisation, under the auspices of the Vatican Congregation for Saintly Causes.  There are normally at leat two of these - one locally based, where the virtues of the individual under consideration were most notably developed and identified and where popular devotion is most apparent, and a centrally-based postulator for all such causes, in this case Fr. Enrico dal Covolo, the Salesian Postulator based in Rome.

    The Compri visit to Italy appears to be the beginning of a resurgence of interest in the Cimatti cause.  One of the predominant factors in this cause, quite apart from the obvious focus on his virtues, is the fact that he wrote some 6,000 letters, all of them deeply revealing of his pastoral, personal life and mission.  The major current task is the accurate transcribing of these letters in a range of languages (at least Italian, Japanese, Korean) and their publication.

    Additionally, a DVD is under publication.  A range of Cimatti's musical compositions are already available on CD (he wrote an astonishing 1,000 pieces, including piano, songs, and an opera).  There are thoughts too to a major Italian production of Cimatti's operatic masterpiece, Hosakawa Grazia, recently performed in Tokyo.

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