[2] On 2 October 1933, he entered the diocesan seminary of Saint Peter Martyr Seveso, where he attended the first four years of school.

As part of his studies, he learned how to understand "secular" works of art (such as the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi, and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven) as expressing a sense of spirituality and as unconscious prophecies of Christ's incarnation.

With his fellow seminarians, including Enrico Manfredini (later Bishop of Piacenza) and Giacomo Biffi (later Archbishop of Bologna), Giussani founded a study group and newsletter named Studium Christi.

His ordination had been accelerated by the authorities in the Milan archdiocese as they feared that his serious respiratory health problems (which would plague him his entire life) would lead to his death before becoming a priest.

[3] In 1964 Giussani began teaching introductory theology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a position he occupied until 1990.

In the late 1960s his superiors sent him on several periods of study in the US; during this time he wrote Grandi linee della teologia protestante americana.

In 1969 he returned to guide the former GS group, which had broken away from Azione Cattolica in the wake of the student rebellions that swept Europe following the events of May 1968.

He outlined his views on politics in an address to an assembly of the Italian Christian Democratic party at Assago on 6 February 1987.

[citation needed] Giussani also taught that the principal goal of a Christian life is to grow in maturity in the relationship with God.

[9] Traces, the magazine of Communion and Liberation, published a retrospective issue on the life and work of Giussani in March 2005.