The number one trusted online resource for Catholic values
Menu
A+ A A-

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete

  • HEATHER KING

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete (1941–2014), physicist, spiritual advisor, and theologian known for his wit and warmth, authored the essay collection "God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity" (2002).


AlbaceteAlbacete was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, one of three sons.  After graduating from a Catholic high school in Puerto Rico, he majored in physics and aerospace science at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C.

He worked for seven years at a Maryland weapons facility, then broke off a wedding engagement and began studying for the priesthood at Theological College, the national seminary of CUA.  He was ordained in 1973 at the age of thirty-two, became an assistant to the Archbishop of Washington, and was assigned three years later to be a guide during a visit by then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyła.

The two became friends, bonding over their love for theater and literature.  After Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II in 1978, Albacete also became a friend and confidant to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.

Yet he seemed uninterested in his personal advancement.  Notoriously rumpled, perpetually late, a negligent returner of phone calls and emails, Monsignor loved good food, drink, and conversation, and had both a magnificent capacity for friendship and a glorious sense of humor.

But Monsignor Albacete was anything but superficial.  Celibacy, he came to understand, "is the radical, outward expression of the poverty of the human heart, the poverty that makes true love possible by preventing it from corrupting into possession or manipulation."

Of the victims of 9/11, he observed: "Their humanity.  That was their offense.  That was the object of their hatred.  This was hatred of the human."

In God at the Ritz, he considered religion, politics, and sex.  Those who suffer, he insisted, "are the ones who truly transform the world.  They are the true revolutionaries on behalf of human dignity."

He appeared on public television, debated atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens, and helped establish a New York branch of the lay Catholic organization Communion and Liberation, founded by Monsignor Luigi Giussani, now a Servant of God.

Monsignor Albacete died at seventy-three of complications of Parkinson's disease.

Two years earlier, he had observed in a talk: "Every Mass…is like the sign at the house of Mary in Nazareth that has the well-known proclamation of the Gospel, Verbum caro factum est, 'the Word became flesh,' but in that place there's one little word added to it that's different — hic, namely 'here.' 'Here the Word became flesh.' 'Here.'"

This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.

Please show your appreciation by making a $3 donation. CERC is entirely reader supported.

dividertop

Acknowledgement

king Heather King. "Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete." Magnificat (March, 2020).

Reprinted with permission from Magnificat.

Join the worldwide Magnificat family by subscribing now: Your prayer life will never be the same!

The Author

king king1 Heather King is a sober alcoholic, an ex-lawyer, a Catholic convert, and a full-time writer. She is the author of: Parched, Redeemed: Stumbling Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding, Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Poor Baby, Stripped, Holy Days and Gospel Reflectionsand Stumble: Virtue, Vice, and the Space Between. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her website here

Copyright © 2020 Magnificat