“Go out to all the world”: The Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo
By Fr. John Roderick, F.S.C.B.
September, 2025
The Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo (FSCB) celebrates its 40th anniversary on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14. The special occasion is an opportunity to reflect upon God’s providence and faithfulness towards the Fraternity since its founding. It is above all a time of thanksgiving and joy. The Psalmist beautifully expresses the sentiment that characterizes this occasion: “Our mouths were filled with laughter; our tongues sang for joy. It was said among the nations: The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy” (Psalm 126:2-3).
Traditionally, forty marks the coming of age and entering the full maturity of adult life. Biblically, it symbolizes the completion of a foundational period of life associated with trials, purification, and spiritual development. In the Old Testament, after their exodus from Egypt, the Israelites spent forty years in the desert prior to entering the Promised Land. This was a privileged time for conversion, maturing in their faith and learning to rely completely on God’s providence. The length of forty years also marks a generational transformation. It regularly takes this time for a new generation to emerge.
The Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo was officially founded on September 14, 1985, by Fr. Massimo Camisasca, the founder and first superior, along with six other priests (Umberto Fantoni, Antonio Maffucci, Gianni Malberti, Fiorenzo Onofrio, Dario Rubes, and Sandro Spinelli). While it began with these seven priests and a group of six seminarians, the Fraternity is now made up of 152 missionary priests who live in over 30 houses scattered around the world in 13 countries.
I would like to share a few of the events and encounters that led to the birth of the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo.
A life-changing encounter. In 1960, at the age of fourteen, Massimo Camisasca met Fr. Luigi Giussani through the group Gioventù Studentesca (GS, Student Youth Group). The encounter with Fr. Giussani and the youth group was life-changing; through them, he discovered the experience of Christianity as an event of communion and of friendship. This experience of Christianity, with its accent on shared life, deeply moved him. This dynamic youth group would later grow into the Communion and Liberation ecclesial movement.
Each year, Fr. Giussani accompanied the youth group on a retreat to a beautiful place on the Ligurian sea called Varigotti. During his second year of high school, Fr. Massimo remembers participating in one of these retreats where Fr. Giussani spoke about the theme of communion. Fr. Massimo recounts being deeply moved and spending the train trip back to Milan ruminating on what he had discovered with incredible clarity: “Jesus Christ, God become man, was present in the lived communion and friendship among us.” “It seemed to be too beautiful to be actually true, almost like a dream,” he continued. This insight was a seed God planted in his early life that would later take root and gradually grow into the Fraternity.
During his senior year of high school, the young Massimo asked to speak with Fr. Giussani. Fascinated by how this priest lived his life, the question arose in him: “And what if I become a priest?” “It seemed to me that in order to totally and completely live what he taught me; I had to become like him.” At the time, Massimo loved studying philosophy and thought about becoming a Dominican priest rather than a diocesan priest like Fr. Giussani. Fr. Giussani encouraged him to study philosophy at the Catholic University of Milan. During his final year of university, he visited the Dominican convent in Bologna for a period of discernment, but after a short time, discerned that this was not the community where God was asking him to become a priest.
A few years later, in 1972, Massimo asked to be admitted to the diocesan seminary at Venegono, but his request was denied. The period of his life following this mysterious “no” was very trying for him. However, looking back upon it, Fr. Massimo is quick to mention that he sees God’s loving hand at work through these circumstances. God was preparing something special for him. “The Fraternity of St. Charles would not have been born if I would have become a Dominican priest or had entered the seminary at Venegono.”
Still feeling called to the priesthood, Fr. Massimo began to see if he could find a seminary that would accept him. A priest friend, Fr. Carlo D’Imporzano introduced him to a missionary community in Bergamo called “Paradiso.” It was a community founded in 1950 that formed priests to be sent as missionaries to help dioceses in Italy that had shortages of priests. Soon after he entered the seminary for this community, other young men belonging to the Communion and Liberation movement who desired to dedicate their lives to God as priests also entered this community. United by their desire to live their priestly vocations in light of their encounter with Fr. Giussani, these men formed a small group of fraternity. Without recognizing it, these years at the Paradiso seminary were decisive for what would eventually become the Fraternity of St. Charles.
Fr. Massimo was ordained in 1975. In 1978, he was asked to move to Rome and serve as a liaison between Communion and Liberation, which had grown to become an international ecclesial movement and the Vatican. During this time, he kept in contact and lived good friendships with the seminarians from CL, many of whom had become priests.
In the mid-1980s, the Paradiso community underwent major changes, and all its members were invited to discern whether they wanted to become priests serving in the Diocese of Bergamo or to choose another diocese or another path. Around the same time, Communion and Liberation was granted an audience with Pope John Paul II to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Communion and Liberation. In his address, John Paul II encouraged the community to continue its mission. At the end of the audience, he gave them this mandate, which would later be significant to the founding of the Fraternity: “Go out to all the world to bring the truth, the beauty, and peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer.” These beautiful words from the late pontiff were prophetic and stirred in Fr. Massimo and several other men present at the audience the desire to follow this invitation to mission.
The following year, with the encouragement of Fr. Giussani, Fr. Massimo, together with the six other priests, signed the founding document marking the beginning of the path of the official recognition of the Fraternity by the Catholic Church. On March 19, 1999, John Paul II recognized the Fraternity as a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right. Three key ideas that guided our Fraternity were in this founding document: we desired to be priests (1), dedicated to mission (2), who lived a common life together (3). These intuitions lived and understood in light of the charism of the movement Communion and Liberation continue to guide the growth of the Fraternity.
The first houses of three or four priests of the Fraternity began to spread in Italy and around the world throughout the 1990s. “They are men whom Christ has called to live together forever,” wrote Fr. Massimo about the members of the Fraternity. “The necessity of the mission sends them to live far apart. But they live far apart as if they were together.” The prophetic words spoken by John Paul II continue to guide our community forty years later.
In the mid-2000s, a group of young women led by Sr. Rachele Paiusco began inquiring about the possibility of forming a new community to share in the mission and experience of the Fraternity of St. Charles. In 2007, on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, five of them signed the first constitution giving birth to the new community as a Private Association of the Faithful: Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo. Currently, there are about 30 religious sisters who are living in four houses in four countries.
Today, the seminary of the Fraternity of St. Charles is in Rome and we currently have a group of about twenty young men discerning the call to become missionary priests with the Fraternity.
On this special anniversary, I invite you to pray for our Fraternity that we may continue to be faithful to the invitation to bring to the places the Church invites us to serve the truth, the beauty, and peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer.
