I remember telling Bruno the words of a Ligabue song: "Love is what counts, love is what counts—do you know another way to cheat death?" He smiled and said, "Say them again, slowly." With love and for love, Bruno lived out the communities of Fede e Luce. His love became tangible in the words of Andrea Cervo, a person with a disability from his community: "Dear Bruno, I don't see you with my eyes, but I feel you always in my heart the way I feel my father. I remember so many beautiful things we lived through together! You stay my 'professor' and my 'teacher' of life. I could never forget you, because what you taught me and gave me lives inside me like in a safe, like a treasure to keep."
"Dad came to Fede e Luce in the winter of 1987-1988," his daughter Marina recalls. "My grandmother had just died, turning his life and that of his two brothers—our whole family—upside down. He learned that at the Seminary of Villa San Luigi, families with disabled members would gather from time to time with the good Father Enrico Cattaneo. That's how it began. Fede e Luce was an anchor of salvation in a terribly painful moment. And as he always did with everything he believed in and cared about, Dad gave himself completely to Fede e Luce (except during the decline of his brothers' lives) because, he said, he had received a True Gift and he had to give back."
Before many of us, Bruno could sense what the communities needed: the impulse to reach beyond themselves, to engage in dialogue, to involve young people and form them, to connect with schools, to make themselves visible inside and outside the Church. Sometimes he spoke about this with force; other times with infinite gentleness. He gave advice and received it too, listening to everyone.
"Dad," Marina continues, "didn't have a simple temperament, and dealing with him wasn't always easy—sometimes it was downright impossible! He always said there was no point in doing things just for the sake of it. That, combined with his artistic side, his exuberant and perfectionist nature, his training as a teacher and formator, and his deep, unshakeable faith, allowed him to do so many beautiful things at Fede e Luce, with Fede e Luce, and for Fede e Luce."
I often saw him retrace his steps, thinking things through and choosing what was best for the community. I saw him moved to tears, praying, feeling small and fragile before the challenges the communities brought him. But I also saw him laugh, dance, celebrate.
"The experiences of his life," Marina writes, "made him capable of a special kind of attention toward others: through small gestures, like his daily message of a passage from Scripture, he showed that he was present and had been thinking of you."
His was a passionate love. I am grateful to him for showing all of us that you get into the boat just as you are and sail beyond your fears and limits, loving those beside you. And, Marina writes, "he never forced us daughters to join the community, but he always offered it to us as something natural because he understood the true charism of Fede e Luce: a way of living, of living as Christians, by giving ourselves to others in awareness and acceptance of the weaknesses and imperfections not only of the young people, but also of parents, friends, and ourselves."
There is a letter from Bruno to me that I hold dear, threaded all through with love: love for friends inside and outside Fede e Luce, for his beautiful family. He told me he felt grateful to God for the life he had lived: "I don't know if there will be time to take walks together, to talk things through. Perhaps, if we make it to heaven, we'll have space and time there to enjoy our friendship. Take care of yourself and of what is most beautiful in you." Thank you, Bruno, for caring for me.