We publish a letter from the architect Pio Daniele Mizzau regarding the future “Ambrosian Monastery,” which was presented in recent days and will be built on the former Milan Expo site.
Dear Editor, The future “Ambrosian Monastery,” planned for construction on the former Expo site in Milan, has been inaugurated at the Abbey of Chiaravalle. Designed by architect Stefano Boeri, the complex unfortunately continues the increasingly frequent departures from traditional Catholic design: the abandonment of the ancestral Latin cross floor plan and the ingenious mastery of lighting—where the very arrangement of the walls visually conveyed faith and the mystery of Salvation—yields once again to a modern and futuristic (triangular) form.
Under the weight of such geometries, the spatial and spiritual hierarchy that has always defined and safeguarded the sacredness of the liturgical hall collapses, here appearing degraded to a mere secular and multipurpose container. We await with anxiety and trepidation to see what internal hierarchical arrangement the renowned architect will propose. It is also worth noting that Boeri—who I assume is not Catholic, as is the long and regrettable custom of religious patrons infatuated with atheist professionals—continues his particular "anti-crusade."
After defying the Milanese vision of the city growing and developing "under the Madonnina," exceeding the height of our Heavenly Mother (108.5 m) by nearly three meters with his famous "vegetal tower" (110 m), he now constructs the dissolution of the sacred. Given such formal disorientation, one might suggest hiring a liturgical consultant, if not a believer.
But the most dramatic aspect is not only linked to the project itself, but also to the flagrant betrayal of the Church's very mission. What is presented as a beacon of modernity reveals itself, in reality, as a "polytheistic temple." Between "libraries," "cloisters," and "gardens of religions"—where each monotheism will be "represented" by a plant in full bloom—it seems that the First Commandment, perhaps under a certain ecumenical halo, is being deliberately relegated. Respect for other religions, a civic duty, can never lead to forgetting the mandate of the evangelical apostolate that Jesus first transmitted to his apostles and, through Tradition, to us today.
Perhaps we are forgetting the lesson of Saint Francis of Assisi, who, driven by the fire of his mission, met with Sultan Malik al-Kamil to proclaim Christ to him and attempt to convert him, certainly not to reassure him about the solidity of his faith nor to theorize a syncretic union. Today, however, a certain ecumenism with a modernist flavor aims to build an artificial "universal religion," pleasing to sterile globalist elites, where dogmatic differences are leveled. We witness daily the absolute confusion experienced by practicing Catholics who are now orphaned of the certain reference of the tabernacle, relegated to small, aniconic, and cold secondary spaces (cf. 1996 Pastoral Note).
Pope Leo XIII, in his famous exorcism, recalled with absolute certainty that Catholic Doctrine alone represents the unique Truth. In this pattern of surrender, the Cross itself, stripped of its salvific meaning, ceases to be the incarnate Logos and is reduced to a mere trademark of good deeds.
The Ambrosian Monastery thus presents itself as a place where the Church, by failing to evangelize those who are far away, ends up abdicating the Truth to conform to political correctness. Faced with this alarming disorder, a respectful and yearning plea for intervention rises to our Pontiff Leo XIV. May His Holiness remind everyone of the centrality of Grace and Truth, following the example of Saint Augustine: the great convert who, abandoning the error of Manichaeism, never sought a syncretic compromise with his past, but submitted completely, with a pure heart and a steadfast mind, to the immutable and saving Truth of Christ.
Pio D. Mizzau
Editorial team of Il Timone
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