Father Costantino Ruggeri, the singer of beauty

Abstract

Father Costantino Ruggeri was born in Adro - an Italian town near Lake Iseo, in the province of Brescia - in 1925, and finished his laborious and intense life on earth in 2007. Religious and artist, he knew how to make both vocations compatible; as he himself said, he had been granted the grace and joy of having identified his faith in art and his art in faith.

A brother of his in religion, Father Michele Piccirillo, famous archeologist of the Studium Biblicum in Jerusalem, has written: "In the precesses of Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours, on the Tuesdays of the third week the Church invites us to pray like this: Lord , we pray for the artists to whom you have entrusted the mission to reveal the splendor of your Face; make their works bring to humanity a message of peace and hope ».

He adds: "In that spirit I think we should thank the Lord for all that Father Costantino has done for the Church and for the Franciscan Order. He has been a Christian and Franciscan artist, with the sacred fire of beauty inside him. A Christian, a priest, lives to beautify the Church of God, living his life behind the wake of Christ (...) Father Costantino has made the Church more beautiful, living his life as a Christian and a priest, making available his artistic skills, of which God has made him master in abundance ».

Let's briefly go through the stages of his life.