“Today we have all felt the need for this encounter, which is an encounter in the presence of Christ, with our dear brother, whose separation from us - humanly so tragic and cruel - has a particular, unusual eloquence. [...] We are linked to him with multiple ties. During these years, he was the president of the Italian Catholic Action at the national level. I met him personally after the Council, in the first group of the lay council; there I met him and also his wife and children. And now that, after that time I have to celebrate this funeral liturgy after his death, I feel again that it is a close person, although we have not seen each other since for a number of years. [...] The word of the cross was necessary; the death of the Innocent was necessary, as the definitive act of his mission. It was necessary to "justify man..." to shake the heart and conscience, to constitute the definitive argument in that clash between good and evil which runs through the history of man and the history of peoples. .. Sacrifice was necessary. The Death of the Innocent. Christ left this sacrifice of his to the Church as his greatest gift. He left it in the Eucharist. And not only in the Eucharist: he left it in the testimony of his disciples and confessors. While today we ideally gather around the body of our brother, we remember that we are in Rome, which in the first centuries was the spectacle of the continuous repetition of the bloody persecutions of Christ's confessors. The tragedy, on the other hand, consists in the fact that one chooses death. You choose the death of an innocent man. The death of a father of a family, of a scholar, of a servant of the national community, of a guardian of culture, of a promoter of the common good is chosen".

Vittorio Bachelet

Saint Paul VI to the Italian Catholic Action, April 25, 1977