Carlo Carretto
Little Brother (1910-1988)

"The desert is always the same, the sky is always beautiful, the road deserted. ... The only thing which is always new is God."

Carlo Carretto was born on April 2, 1910, in northern Italy. He studied to become a teacher, but political difficulties under the fascists curtailed his career. Instead he immersed himself in the dynamic youth movement of Catholic Action, which sought to mobilize the laity in advancing the religious and social message of the church. Rising to a position of leadership in the movement, he spent nearly twenty years immersed in a blur of meetings, conferences, and public organizing. All of this came to an abrupt halt in 1954 when he surprised his friends by resigning from Catholic Action and announcing his intention to join the Little Brothers of Jesus, the community of desert contemplatives inspired by the spirituality of `Charles de Foucauld. In explaining his decision, Carretto could say only that he felt summoned by a call from God: "Leave everything and c with me into the desert. It is not your acts and deeds that I want: f ant your prayer, your love."

In December 1954, at the age of forty-four, Carretto arrived in El Abiodh, a remote oasis in the Saharan desert of Algeria, to enter the novitiate of the Little Brothers. He remained there for ten years. As it turned publication of his Letters from the Desert established his reputation as one of the most popular spiritual teachers in the world. Although he went on to publish a dozen books, it was this first book that best captured his message. It described the desert spirituality of Foucauld, who had sought to emulate Jesus during his anonymous years in Nazareth. The Son of God had lived out a presence of divine love in the midst of his poor neighbors, and Foucauld had envisioned in this model a new kind of contemplative life in the world.

For Carretto the desert was a place of encounter with God and testing of faith. But ultimately he believed that the search for Gad in the desert must lead us back to the midst of our fellow human beings. Accordingly, in 1964 Carretto returned to Europe and settled the next year experimental community in Spello, Italy. There lay people were invited to share in the fraternity's life of prayer and reflection. In the next decades, through his retreats and publications, Carretto's reputation spread around the world. He earned a certain notoriety in Italy and the displeasure of many ecclesiastical authorities because of his criticisms of certain aspects of the church-especially the temptations of triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism. But for all his criticisms, there was never ,any doubt about his loyalty to and love for the church: "No, I shall not leave this church, founded on so frail a rock, because I should be founding another one on an even frailer rock: myself."

Carretto's message had much in common with 'St. Francis of Assisi, whose spirit was reflected in the Umbrian countryside around him. In his playfulness, his appreciation for natural beauty, his commitment to poverty and nonviolence, and his anarchistic suspicion of large structures and institutions, he clearly identified with the Poverello. Indeed, one of his most popular books was called "I, Francis," a personal diagnosis of the church and the world delivered in the "voice" of St. Francis. Despite Carretto's critique of nearly every feature of modern life, the book is marked by an immense spirit of hope and an ingenuous vitality, undiminished by age, illness, or even the approach of death. Appropriately, Carretto passed from this life on the feast of St. Francis, October 4, 1988.

It is not hard to understand the source of Carretto's immense attraction. He represented an ascetic, yet joy-filled spirituality available to lay people in the midst of pressing obligations, the noise of the city, or even poverty and suffering. (Carretto was no stranger to loss. An accident in the desert during his novitiate had left him crippled for life.) He showed that a life of prayer was consistent with a passion for social justice. At the me time he reminded social activists of the need to preserve a place of stillness, to listen to the word of God and to find renewal. Essentially, he showed that it was possible to live a contemplative life in the midst of the world, in the desert that is ultimately everywhere. The challenge of the gospel, according to Carretto, was to make an oasis of love in whatever desert we might find ourselves.

• See:
  Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Oros, 1972); Robert Ellsberg, Carlo Carretto: Selected Writings (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994).
  
• See:
  Carlo Carretto E-Seminary

[Reprinted with permission from "All Saints" by Robert Ellsberg (New York: Crossroad, 1998)]