José Medina, U.S. coordinator of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation
Fr. José Medina is the national leader of the Catholic ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.*
Fr. Medina has devoted much of his professional career to the world of education first as teacher of physics and mathematics in Washington DC and Boston, and for the past six years as principal of Cristo Rey Boston, a Catholic High School for students with limited financial resources.
Father Medina is a native of Spain and a member of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo. He received his civil engineering degree from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, a Bachelors of Sacred Theology from the Pontificia Universita Lateranense in Rome, Italy and a Master in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Fr. Medina’s educational work was recently featured in Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice (School Turnaround: Cristo Rey Boston High School Case Study, September 2012).
* Communion and Liberation began in 1954 in Italy, at the Berchet classical high school in Milan, when Father Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) started an initiative of Christian presence which uses the pre-existent name Gioventù Studentesca (GS; English: Student Youth).
Its current name, Communion and Liberation (CL), appeared for the first time in 1969. This name brings together the conviction that the Christian event, lived in communion, is the foundation of man’s authentic liberation. As Benedict XVI declared, Communion and Liberation “today … offers a profound way of life and actualizes the Christian faith, both in a total fidelity and communion with the Successor of Peter and with the Pastors who assure the governing of the Church, and through spontaneity and freedom that permit new and prophetic, apostolic and missionary achievements”.
Communion and Liberation is present today in roughly eighty countries on all the inhabited continents, and is guided by Father Julián Carrón, who succeeded Father Giussani after his death in 2005.
No form of membership enrollment is involved, but only the free participation of individual persons. The basic instrument for the formation of those who belong to the Movement is a weekly catechesis which is called the School of Community.
