FROM THE MANUSCRIPT OF FATHER RASCHI'S "GILIANA"

On January 29,1962, for a variety of reason, I made the acquaintance of Miss Giliana Faglia, who though deaf was not mute. She was affected by siringomielia and her spinal cord was blocked in three points and thereby prevented from performing its necessary functions. Some mysterious "virus" of the spinal cad, that left scientists baffled kept Giliana sick and suffering.
The Good Lord blessed her with charismatic gifts and heavenly visions, and when I was with her I too experienced this charismatic gifts, and it was on one such occasion that the issue of Monte Borriga (Fasce) was clarified for me with great certainty.

1. The will of the Holy Virgin was made known to me, as well as the creation of her Sanctuary on Monte Borriga.
2. I was made to understand, and it was explicitly confirmed that it was Mary's desire that there would be a fixed and unforgettable order of priests established there.
3. I was also made to understand that such an undertaking would be for both myself and for Giliana a terrible Calvary.

But when the charismatic experience is a true one it bestows one with a certainty, a strength, a courage and a perseverance never before experienced

FROM THIS MOMENT ON THE TRUE WORK ON MONTE FASCE BEGAN.

In September of 1964 the work really got under way, and in fact I signed the contract for the Chapter on September 15th of that year. A few days later on September 22nd during an apparition that took place between 10:30 - 11:30 in the temporary Chapel, the Immaculate Virgin said to both Giliana and me:
- "I am the Immaculate Conception. The work is just now beginning: Pray, my son, pray as much as you can".
- "Now your Calvary is beginning. But take heart. I WILL REMAIN WITH YOU IN ALL MY TENDERNESS".
- " Don't be agitated, don't worry, I will take care of everything".
- "The Church, the Sanctuary, even if it's just a small little Chapel, that will be enough".
- "I want neither luxury nor riches; let it be simple

We learn from the homily of 27th June 1981, given by Father Bonaventura Raschi, how he met Giliana.

In September – October 1961 a group of pilgrims went to Monte Fasce where at the time there was only a small chapel.
After the Holy Mass a nice Lady who was very direct in her way of speaking asked Father Raschi if he could go to visit Giliana. The Father asked the reason why he should go to visit Giliana. And there was the end to the question.
While the Father was in the Monastery in Albaro he received a phone call from a Lady who invited him to go to see Giliana. As she didn’t give any reason, the Father hung the receiver and this time too there was the end to the question.
After some more time while he was still at the Monastery in Albaro, Father Raschi received a phone call from a Lady who invited him to lunch in a restaurant in Genova Quarto.
Father Raschi accepted to go and have a coffee.
The Lady confessed to the Father: “I’m literally, deeply converted.”
The Father cheered up while the Lady went on affirming that she had converted next to Giliana’s bed when the girl, suffering from a terrible disease to the marrow – syringomyelia – had an ecstasy when laying in her bed.
Father Raschi thought within himself: “Here comes again that name: Giliana!”
The Lady went on affirming that, the ecstasy having finished, Giliana turned to her and said: "Go to San Giovanni Rotondo to confess to Father Pio. So I went to Father Pio for the confession. At the end of the confession the Father asked me if I knew a deaf-dumb girl who had visions of Our Lady and whose name was Giliana."
(omissis)
After that conversation Father Raschi wanted to meet Giliana.
It was the day of Saint Frances of Sales, 29th January 1962, when Father Raschi went for the first time to visit Giliana.
They prayed together and Our Lady appeared to them, She blessed them and encouraged them to perseverance.
When She appeared for the third time, Our Lady said to Father Raschi: “ My very dear son, every time you will pray with this girl of mine, I’ll be with you, you’ll see Me and I’ll talk to you.”
(omissis)

"Our Lady wanted to send Giliana with me and she is with me. She’s a respectable creature in all respects; her merit is to have aroused this, not only, but to have deeply helped me not only in the ideal, in the prayer – that is what really means and gives us every force – but also economically.”

HOMILY ON 17TH SEPTEMBER 1980 AT CHIARI (BS)

Father Raschi and Giliana are at Chiari for the fiftieth year of marriage of Giliana's parents. Father Raschi has celebrated the Mass in the small chapel near Cossirano where Giliana as a child saw the Virgin a lot of times and where on a stone it is still possible to see Giliana's blood when obeying to the Virgin's will she walked on her knees from the small chapel of the Virgin to a cross nearby. The small chapel of the Virgin is in a big meadow going up a path on the left, while the small chapel with the cross is forward on the right.

This is the reason why fifty years have passed as if they were a day and they have passed in the power, in the grace and in the blessing of God, but there is more. Here, in this chapel, one of your flesh and blood, the eldest of your tenderness, has received (Father Raschi is moved to tears) she has received from God the gift of the Apparition, the gift of God's greatness and so a future of huge blessings on earth and above all in heaven. This is a very important memory (the Father continues the homily crying) I've felt it for years and today, forgive me, I am a little touched, I really feel it in all its fullness. Here the Lady has revealed Herself, your daughter , the fruit of your womb, has received the blessing and the mission and she has become the living word that has been able, has been able, and let's say it with no fear and with a great truth, has been able to build the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin. This is really the greatest grace in a family.

Then it is on this aspect, with this thought, with this blessing and with this sweet and wonderful future, even if tried by several crosses; but the Lord has been true and he remains so: he who wants to follow Me should deny himself, take his cross every day and follow Me. So the crosses don't surprise us. They belong to the very close family of God's sequence and then they are the true blessing and guarantee that we are in His hands. So this greatness of yesterday, this greatness of today and God's wonderful blessing, may cheer up again your days, may you be happy because at the moment I'm positively sure that the Virgin's blessing is making, at the moment, Her great and wonderful motherly and divine gesture.

Then may God bless you again and may your days be happy even if tried by some crosses which are always present in life. Then my wish is this, and may it be alive and placed just on God's and the Virgin's altar because this holy land may give full life to everything you have hoped for, to everything you still hope for and above all to the great eternal day that will be our blessed peace.

I bless you with my whole heart and follow the sacrificial prayer which wins on us all the most ample and fruitful redemption that can descend from Christ who comes again on the altar as He sacrificed Himself on the Calvary.

  May God bless you and may you be very very happy.

THE BOOK OF ALESSANDRO MASSOBRIO “THE GILIANA SMALL–DONKEY OF IMMACULATE”

- … On the glass, on which refract the thousand rays of the sun, here, it is now possible to distinguish something.

Are the eyebrows, nose, mouth, but especially the eyes of a beautiful Lady infinitely, infinitely gentle, infinitely distant. If it is there, on the glass window and see. In hovering between heaven and earth, closed in his mantle yet pierced by the rays of the sun, the Virgin Mary Giliana expects from the first word of a long dialogue. A dialogue that will last throughout life.

“Come down there right away! – Says to the girl, who is very judicious for its age – ended up going to pieces the glass and then the mother of sgridate touch me.”

- … Thebless this relationship with the supernatural are all in this episode, apparently naive, in fact filled with a profound meaning. Giliana – us has trusted a person who has attended for many years, the protagonist of the story we are going to tell – and he lived life to those who were around the experience of the supernatural as if it were the normal routine every day. With her not touched the ground.

- … When we talk about heaven “additional angel” and it apart from the guardian for minor wingspan of one of the first than the second, is expressed in the language of visual perception and not with that of abstract theological reasoning.

To her Mirìam released in appeared in two toe, which did resemble a little angel, and a face slightly oleaster, who went out from under a helmet castano.

Mirìam was not an angel but a girl died at an early age, which, in common parlance, is called for precisely angel. Giliana not put to talk about the very nature's spiritual and the spiritual, yes, but in some ways incomplete of the human soul, devoid of the body of which should serve as a substantial form.

A Giliana interested in the relationship between you ran, and this little creature, who had become his best friend, his devoted assistant, his conscience, as wise disarmantemente naive.

- … that fiction or mount he had not revealed the other side of the planet Giliana, that often and willingly, given by dim Giliana. Very reluctant to reveal aspects of themselves that the suffering prevailed on joy, atonement and death on the resurrection and the life.

- … Because, as elsewhere has already been written, Giliana was and continues to be the best example of that dogma, so difficult for the modern man, which the church gave the name of the communion of saints.

The communion of saints teaches us that human suffering – and especially the suffering of men, women and children of those who have committed no crime by having to expiate through the physical and moral suffering – is not a question inexplicable. A mystery capable of inducing more enlightened minds to be engulfed in the darkness of atheism.

It is the indispensable instrument by which the compensation of the invisible economy is once again restored.

Because if evil is a kind of black wave of surf, which, escaping from the torn side of a tanker, impecia and pollutes beaches and animal innocent, in the same way, the good must have opposed the requirement. It must therefore arise from suffering of the innocent to overflow, so absolutely free, for the benefit of the culprit.

- Giliana that shared the passion of our Lord, who suffered for many diseases but as sick – not ever interrupted his activities – to the benefit of the Sanctuary. What he wanted lindo and fragrant like a beautiful flower to be placed on the altar, before the Blessed.

- It was not one exorcist, Giliana, nor claimed to be. But the deep devotion that linked to the Virgin Mary, the natural enemy of the devil, made her not only a bulwark against attacks by evil but sharp weapon, a sword, we could say, always bet against the throat of monster.

The protagonist of our story possessed, in fact, a kind of guessing, all supernatural, which was the lot, and always, in his presence. Then the friend of Mirìam, tormented by the innocent suffering, evolved in avenging angel.

- … bring to light the mystery of a complex such as Giliana not really possible.

When our protagonist has only three and a half years.

A tragedy that is called meningitis and, as a serpent, subtle and elusive strip especially among the child population. There is no penicillin, no appropriate care. A Chiari if they register three or four cases. Certainly not to Giliana, at least in the view of doctors who treat these sudden spikes of high fever as if it were simple indigestion.

And instead of meningitis it is. For 40 days the child is in very serious condition. Every morning about the mother-neighbors asked if I was the small still alive. And living Giliana is, in fact, even if it leaves the loss, bringing back not back disabilities. Remain deaf forever and for a short period of time also blind.

- But not only are the angels visit to Giliana. The girl with a conversa cappuccino Benevento, who spends a grama existence of persecution in the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo. Of course this is Father Pio, the great mystic, of which he Bonaventura Raschi, about the same time, experiences and friendship gifts.

Father Pio, which appears in a bi Giliana, so it appreciates the supernatural gifts, which he will, as we shall see, to act as an intermediary between the visionary and Franciscan, when the dark forces who oppose the City of Little, threatens to frustrate the efforts of isolates of God.

But it is not over: there is a third presence, and that often leaves willingly contemplate the big eyes of the innocent child. It is the most gentle, almost more familiar. It is the face of Mary, his hands, his veil, her figure, which fades in the clouds high in the sky. Giliana, as we have already said, has learned to always know. That his meetings with the Our Lady are characterized by maximum spontaneity.

- … especially to those who are suffering so much. Behind all that joie de vivre, Giliana fact lets slip phrases, which suddenly reveal the abyss of his pain. Sometimes, Carmen asks: “How is the voice of mom and dad? And as yours?”. And in front of the other, adds: “It would have been better if I had been blind, deaf and dumb to be because it is ugly.”.

There is little to add. Carmen silent. The darkness is spreading in the small apartment.

- … Thought dominant in the years preceding the meeting with Father Raschi.

The search for the meaning of existence. Or rather, the search for direction to give their lives.

Of course, Our Lady called to himself, but how to respond to this call? The convent? Consecration? Marriage?

And then, it was really one of the Our Lady which listened to the voice and saw the image? It was possible that everything was illusion, or worse, satanic illusion?

This long series of questions as answers Giliana always puts down such problems to the will of God. From perfect contemplative, not acting, not trying to determine on her own their destiny. Wait a sign, and this sign will serve as a lodestar to guide navigation on the dark waters of the ocean of life.

First, it drops on a daily basis. He domestic work, often went to the river with buckets full of laundry to wash, which then washed and so heavy, carries back home. He even suitors, which remain enchanted by her beauty all spiritual, which combines her with a noble bearing instinctively.

As if his training had not done Mompiano, the good nuns at the wand easy, but in the most exclusive elite institutions.

- And finally the Mother of God begins to leaked something of his will. Suddenly, Giliana is found in the bed of a river. A water neutered, whose bed was flooded with thorns, rocks, pieces of bottle. But on the horizon, a reassuring. That the Virgin Mary, which is a sign of the girl is, however, to go to her. Certainly the path is difficult, barefoot soon red blood, but Giliana proceeds. The one who is called Our Lady of Victories and the first is that the victories achieved on ourselves, on our little selfishness on endless moorings, which holds the boat in the port of this short life, in spite of the ocean off the call loudly.

Now Giliana beginning to understand: his life will not be easy, but an easy life is really what you propose those who are working to follow Christ, who said: “He who wants to save his life will lose it.”?

- … Giliana not sure siringomielia dies, but his health remains irretrievably compromised.

It is subjected to painful and debilitating treatments.

For all fifties opens and closes like a pincer around his legs until quell'invalidità absolute cause, which only Raschi Father, in 1962, will release it.

- … Giliana, even on his deathbed, although tormented so unspeakable since his illness, never forget this lesson. It shut down, forgiving once again, the last time. Even those who had chosen forgiveness mission and forgiveness, in the footsteps of his poor Assisi, were consecrated, but now that same forgiveness seemed to have forgotten entirely.

- … Giliana has the good fortune of being able to count, at least by a certain moment of his life, on the competence of doctrinal Father Raschi. He will explain to the dogmatic formulas, names of Greek root, philosophical terms, that his interlocutor divine fray sometimes in his speech. As for you, Giliana merely defined “Small-donkey of Our Lady.” Protesting that “if you m'insegni not, I do not understand.”

- … In room, Father Raschi had reserved on the ground floor of the sanctuary of Mount Bandages – a simple room like a monastic cell as bright and clean as a surgical room – Giliana had deployed its legion heavenly around two paintings of the Our Lady and a crucifix, placed at the foot of his bed.

- … It should be said that Giliana increased its intimacy with the Virgin only with the passing of years. As if the divine Ms. disvelasse itself insofar as its interlocutor proved to be worthy of that disclosure. Before, only appearances. Then, personal messages, which are not covered unless the person concerned or that the person concerned was not authorized to disclose. Finally, as solemn warnings biblical predictions, which could Giliana proclaim the sight of the whole people of God.

This kind of messages, however, would only characterized the last years of visionary.

... At the time of Cossirano, Giliana listened and kept everything in his heart. Leaving to others the task of the proclamation, which she is currently not lay.

... Once again, therefore, no egocentrism. Any temptation to draw upon itself the eyes of the world. The protagonist of our story remained in the crowd of those present, only read the lips of girls communications Mary. Only mother Mina, as did the rest even in the living room of his house during the apparitions of the Virgin housewives, taking notes.

... Giliana proceeded, without any protection, gravel on the ground that stretched around the chapel. Moving back and forth, from a building where, after a few years, is the second kind newsstand crucified with Jesus, without any measure other than that sought by Madonna. Which had asked quell'innocente to atone, by itself, the sins of many culprits.

... He had asked the Virgin Mary, Woman of sorrows, the one in which a sword had pierced his soul, to experience for yourself what you would say scarnificarsi your knees on the gravel. And that request, and on the lips of everyone else, would have the flavor of blasphemy, is transformed, if the young deaf profferita - speaking in a human cry of pain and faith. That not only should not offend your heavenly protector, but, indeed, fill your eyes with tears.

Then, when the trial had finally ended, we know that Giliana you clean the knee, pulling out one by one the stones from the meat they were penetrated. It seems that not felt pain. As if the Queen of Victories, after having offered the dish bitter suffering, the proposed hours a small taste of the rewards that would have been confidential.

Among the boulders, like rubies forgotten, the spots of blood rosseggiavano still under the last rays of the setting sun.

... The meeting with Father Giliana Raschi now incumbent on our history, as the rock on the bottom of Manzonian alpine cliff where you will soon find a fall. They want the laws of nature, which require similar to attract its similar to how the magnetic poles as complementary opposites. But mostly he wants the law of that Providence, which can “catch” in any way and at any of the actors who plays is going to represent.

... The streets of Father Raschi and would therefore Giliana cross, despite the efforts put in place to prevent that event. The achievement of which still lacked a leader and a hero of truly colossal stature. That little by little began to emerge out of the already but not yet. The protagonist is called Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and what we are about to tell is the long history of his meetings with Giliana Faglia.

... Meanwhile, as we shall inform a witness of those years, the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, in San Giovanni Rotondo, in some way are multiplying. Giliana saw the Mother of God almost every day and almost always at church, where she spent all her time. Then, at night, at the same time as the caretaker monk, from the bottom of the aisle, warned the faithful of the imminent closure, the Virgin instantly disappeared from the gaze of Giliana. Leaving amazed her escort as Giliana noted that, because of his deafness, he could not hear nor see nor cappuccino, because the latter was at the bottom and in front of us and I was not moving. “

... As for Giliana, traveling to San Giovanni Rotondo, made during the early sixties, contributed greatly to the doubts fugarne applicants. Although the cost strapazzo a physical, as evidenced by a ticket, wrote to Father Raschi in May'64, in which, in his handwriting well set, Giliana claims to be “arrived in San Giovanni around noon”, adding however that if “the trip was benino”, not as it should be good health. So much so that the Father is hopeful that early back to the house, not just returned to Milan.

... Father Raschi, in fact, places where it would be endless. Renowned preacher, a tireless apostle of the blue Militia he founded in the image and likeness of Polish martyr Maximilian Kolbe, director and editor of magazines for inspiration Marian, our Franciscan is frequently on the roads of the world that the peace of her convent Albaro.

And he could confirm the odometer of his car, on which a special guardian angel has avoided many times to end off-road for excessive speed. But Bonaventura Father knows that when God calls you can not pretend not to hear. Why is the voice of God is so strong and stubborn to be overcome not only the walls of bricks and cement but also the doubts of men, their reluctance, the pretexts, the hesitations, the apparent deafness.

Something similar has happened with regard Giliana. In the beginning, there was a seemingly trivial and entirely unforeseeable. In a beautiful day of autumn 1961, the Father celebrated, as always, put in the Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima on Monte Fasce.

From the look up on the city is expanding, then on the surface of the sea and then you lose onto the horizon, the line which, in a clear day - and it was really quiet - you can even “read” watermark in terms of Corsica. In short, a show that brings in the kidnapping and the bones should not get more. To live up there forever, maybe chatting, occasionally, with Jesus and Mary.

Father Raschi that idea has always cradled in the heart, to the point of bringing about, a few years earlier, on a truck of luck, a statue of the Madonna, the sculptor Paur of Ortisei, coming directly from Portugal - where His Excellency the Bishop Leiria was blessed - and placed in the chapel built for the occasion.

But the dreams are one thing and reality another. Meanwhile, Father Bonaventura says putting on the chapel, while a considerable crowd of the faithful gather around. These people come from more disparate, because if the reputation as a preacher of the Father is truly great, like that of the exorcist Father is greater still.

Then, when everything is over, when the small crowd begins to thinnings, a woman approaches the priest. It is a person that we have learned to know in the course of our history, because his presence is a constant background on which, in the foreground, projecting Giliana. This is mother Mina, always looking for an inner security, always searching for the word of a man of God to act as a lifesaver in the sea of doubts that surround it.

“Father, why do not you find my Giliana?”

... But, once again, Our Lord is persecuted persecutor and reached with his ears the rebel monk. The grab for the cord and the habit of dragging out, where it awaits another cord, the phone, which suddenly began ringing. Raschi father, who, oblivious to everything, is in the convent of Albaro, performs the act decisively to address the microphone. And started what will be ““ his story. The story that can change not only the life that is living, but also one that is going to live. A story that, henceforth, will have only one name: Giliana.