Paola Majocchi, the co-foundress of Seguimi dies

Rome. Paola Majocchi, together with the Claretian Missionary Fr. Anastasio Gutiérrez, started the Seguimi (Follow me) Movement, which maintains close relationships with the Claretian Family.

Paola is born in Reggio Emilia (Italy) in 1931. She has a great desire to live as consecrated to the Lord. She gets in contact with jurist Fr. Anastasio Gutiérrez and with him founds in 1965 the Lay Group Seguimi (Follow me).

Paola “has an intuition” and Fr. Gutiérrez “has the juridical means” – the minimum structure that gives life to the Movement: a symbiosis and a strongly fruitful complementarity in the pre and post-council Church. What united them? The desire that “Christ were all in everyone,” the longing for renewal and simplification of life in the Church, to obtain that every person could express itself with its potentialities, with the freedom of the “children of God,” to tend to communion and to family life as a place to be oneself and to grow in evangelical witnessing. In addition, they had in common, beyond aspects of character: that they knew how to work intensively, without timetable.

In 1984 the Group, mainly thanks to Fr. Gutiérrez’ competency and tenacity, obtained the Pontifical approval of the Pontifical Council for the laity; and since 1990 Seguimi began its expansion abroad: Spain, Africa and the first steps in Latin America. On September 26, 2009, with the death of Paola, preceded by that of the “Padrino” (as Fr. Gutiérrez was familiarly known) on January 6, 1998, they come to a fullness of communion.

In 2005 his book “In cordata” appeared, in which he reflects the spirit of the Movement.

When a missionary dies, we should celebrate the last rites with devotion, fraternal love, and simplicity. We should remember all our brothers who have gone before us in the service of the Gospel, commending them to the Lord with the prescribed prayers, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist.

We should show the same reverence and respect for our departed parents and for deceased collaborators of the Congregation.

(Constitution 19)