Press Release

La memoria genera futuro (Memory generates future)

Available in a book of meditations
offered to the Synod

by Maria Ignazia Angelini

With a Preface by
Cardinal Mario Grech

Vatican City, Friday 6 September 204 – The book La memoria genera future- La sinodalità come stile di Chiesa (Vatican Publishing House, pp. 112, 13 Euros), by Maria Ignazia Angelini, is available in bookshops from today. It is a profound spiritual journey that invites contemplation and proposes valuable food for thought for the mission of the Church in the world. In the nine intense meditations, gathered here in a single volume, which were offered during the spiritual retreat prior to the Synod on synodality and in the same Synodal Assembly in October 2023, Sr. Maria Ignazia Angelini confronts important issues of faith in vibrant and engaging language. At the core shines the evidence that the Word of God can illuminate the synodal journey of the ecclesial community. These pages contain attentive and passionate reflections, authentic invitations to reconsider the value of the blessings of our daily life; to believe in God's impossible, the foundation for facing life's challenges and sharing His passion; to take Jesus' “Yes” to the Father as an example as a model of obedience to the divine will; and to give due weight to the role of women in spreading the Gospel.

The text emphasizes the importance of grasping the beauty and the power of the prayers and parables of the Gospel, through which it is possible to get to know more closely the reality of the Kingdom of God, a seed sown on the earth with a firm faith that it will flourish despite adversity.

In the preface, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, highlights the monastic and Benedictine sensibility, “focused on listening, on walking together, on mutual obedience in the community”, that emerges from Maria Ignazia Angelini’s words.

Cardinal Grech writes,  “I would say that one can describe the contribution of Maria Ignazia Angelini to the journey of the Synodal Assembly through three ‘priorities’: the primacy of the liturgy, the primacy of the Word, the primacy of the Psalms”.

The author

Maria Ignazia Angelini, born in Pesaro in 1944 and consecrated to religious life at the age of 19, is a Benedictine nun of the monastery of Viboldone, in the province of Milan, where she served as novice mistress for sixteen years and abbess from 1996 to 2019. Her publications include Un silenzio pieno di sguardo (A watchful silence) (EDB), Donne in cerca di Dio (Women in search of God) (La Scuola), Quando vedrò il tuo volto? (When will I see your face?) and Perché ogni carne dia lode al Signore (Why all flesh praises the Lord) (Vita e Pensiero). In 2023, at the behest of Pope Francis, she led some spiritual meditations during the retreat for members of the Synod on synodality.

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