It was a beautiful friendship, the one I had with Angelo—one that began in August 2003 at my first Fede e Luce camp experience.
Until then, I had always kept my distance from disability, even though my brother lived with us and had a mild intellectual disability. I considered my brother normal: we grew up together, played together, went to school together. But outside our home, I stayed away from people with disabilities. Meeting Angelo and the other young people in the Raggi di Sole community gradually opened my eyes and helped me encounter those I had once seen as "different." Along this journey, my friendship with Angelo was one of those that transforms your life without you realizing it—and only now, after he has gone to heaven with his mother, do I find myself looking back over all these years we spent together and seeing everything I received from this friend.
Much has been said and written in recent days, but I wanted to share some aspects that marked me in a particular way. The first concerns Angelo's spirituality. Sometimes we allow ourselves to doubt or criticize the beautiful relationship our young people have with the Lord. There are many paths to spirituality, and Angelo had his own—indeed, his very name showed him the way. Our gatherings in community are marked, among other things, by Gospel readings and mime, sharing in small groups, and prayer. Watching Angelo participate in these moments, you might have thought he had little interest; there were times when he did not participate actively, or he would come out with monologues that seemed to make little sense.
But befriending him, accepting him as he was, helped me see past this mask, past what seemed like superficiality, and discover a young man with a deep spirituality of his own. He read the Bible. He had great reverence for sacred places. You'll smile at this, but during walks or even simple journeys, if we passed a church, a shrine, a cemetery—he wanted to go in. He would kneel before a cross and pray. Some might say those were not "real" prayers, but the way I experienced them, those moments were profoundly felt for him. Angelo forgot about time passing; he lived a spirituality that flowed spontaneously from his heart. If spirituality is a journey of love, Angelo was immersed in it. This past summer at camp, when I looked for him, I would find him in the church—there for hours alone, lost in his reflections on life and death.
Yes, Angelo spoke often of death. Whenever we talked seriously, he would always remember his father Giuseppe, his grandparents, a little niece, the Fede e Luce young people who had passed away, my own parents whom he had come to know when I invited him for meals. His questions remind me of Jesus's words in the Gospel: "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." Angelo was always clear in his thinking. When he asked me something and found my answer unclear, he would say: "Either yes or no—make up your mind"—there was no getting around him with half measures. He even tested my loyalty to our friendship; he would ask me, when I sometimes corrected him, "But do you love me?" and leave me speechless, and we would embrace; for him nothing else mattered. What counted was that we loved each other.
Another thing that marked me was his gift for connection. Angelo loved meeting the people around him, people he encountered wherever we went; in him you could see a real hunger for encounter. His mother often told me that from childhood, she always took him everywhere and always let him go out with organizations and groups he was part of. Together we even traveled abroad with Fede e Luce—to France for the movement's 40th anniversary gathering, and to Leeds for the international assembly. Even when there were many people we didn't know, he would sit with the "strangers"; his openness to others, his gentleness, always struck me. I won't hide the fact that I sometimes envied him for his nerve in approaching people—and I thought how we who call ourselves normal are so closed off in ourselves and our small securities.
Wonderful for Angelo was his encounter with Pope Francis during the 2016 Jubilee—a longing so strong that at the moment of embrace his face became so tender, showing all his joy. Everything he did came from a deep desire to be loved and to love. One evening during camp, we went out with the whole community to a festival the village was holding in the church square. When it came time to head back, Angelo would stop and greet everyone we met, and with his smile and gentle manner, he always managed to have his greeting returned: Angelo knew well that this way, he "won people over"—he was fully aware of it, he put his talent to full use, he did not hide it. And the message he was sending became clear to me, and to all the people he met: we are all equally children of God and He loves us as we are; let us keep our hearts open to those we encounter; let us give away smiles!
Thank you, dear friend Angelo, for standing by me.
Roberto Bertin, 2018
