At Venegono near Varese in Italy, the passing of Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, bishop, who, raised from abbot of Saint Paul’s in Rome to the see of Milan, with admirable wisdom of doctrine most zealously fulfilled the office of pastor for the good of his people.
Lifespan: 1880–1954
Beatified: 12 May 1996 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 30 August
“In the end, what counts for the true greatness of the Church and her children is love.”
Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster (born Ludovico Luigi) was born in Rome on 18 January 1880, the son of the head tailor of the pontifical Zouaves; from an early age, Ildefonso served Mass near the Vatican.
Having lost his father, he entered the studentate of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, where his masters were Blessed Placido Riccardi and Don Bonifacio Oslander. Educated in prayer, silence, and asceticism, he felt the desire to become a Benedictine monk in that same abbey. Within a few years he became novice master, claustral prior, and ordinary abbot — years of study in which, without sacrificing the time and energy owed to his duties, he also found space for sacred art, archaeology, and the monastic and liturgical history for which he had a great passion.
Having graduated in philosophy at the College of Sant’Anselmo and obtained his doctorate in theology, he was ordained a priest in 1904, and was immediately entrusted with the most demanding responsibilities: the rectorate of the Pontifical Oriental Institute and a mission as apostolic visitor in Lombardy, Campania, and Calabria. In 1926 he also led the spiritual exercises for the then-Archbishop Roncalli — the future Pope John XXIII — who would later celebrate his funeral.
In 1929 Pius XI chose him to lead the Ambrosian archdiocese and created him a cardinal: he was the first to swear an oath of loyalty before Victor Emmanuel III, as required by the new Concordat just signed between Italy and the Holy See. Milan received him with open arms, even amid the difficult years looming on the horizon. There, Ildefonso — inspired by his most illustrious predecessor, Saint Charles Borromeo — founded the Diocesan Union of Pontifical Honorees, which brought together religious and lay figures distinguished with a pontifical honor.
He was a true pastor who never spared himself: over twenty-five years he made five complete tours of the parishes of his territory, wrote letters to the people and to the clergy in defence of the purity of the faith, sent his liturgical directives, promoted diocesan synods and Eucharistic congresses, and oversaw the construction of new seminaries, among them the one at Venegono where he would breathe his last. People felt his closeness and returned his affection: no one who heard him could remain indifferent to his words, but it was above all by example that Ildefonso conveyed the teaching of the Church.
In the meantime, the Fascist regime had established itself in Italy. Ildefonso, in complete good faith, believed that through cooperation between the government and the Church, Fascism could become an evangelizing ideology — profoundly and firmly Christian. It was not to be. He realized this already in 1938, with the promulgation of the racial laws: in a homily that passed into history, he described the spreading racism as “a heresy.”
In 1939 he took part in the conclave in which Cardinal Pacelli became Pius XII. Then war broke out. In 1945, at the fall of the Italian Social Republic, he proposed a meeting and negotiations between partisan representatives and Mussolini, but the latter chose flight. When Mussolini and his associates were killed and their bodies exposed at Piazzale Loreto, the Archbishop blessed their remains, for “one must show respect for any corpse.” In the post-war period he became the first president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and in 1954, now weary, he retired to Venegono, where he died on 31 August.
He was beatified by John Paul II in 1996.