A Visit to Loyola University Rome

How a Fede e Luce community brought their experience to an American university in Rome
A Visit to Loyola University Rome
Giovanni Grossi at work (photo by Giovanni Grossi)

When Alessandra Ruggieri called to say there was an opportunity to come to this American university as Fede e Luce, I thought at first I couldn't do it. But she insisted, so after work I got in the car with Claudio Moriggia, who is a poet, and Maria Agnese Boitani.

When I saw this place, new to me, I didn't know who the foreigners were. At the start they put us in groups with the job of saying briefly what Fede e Luce means to us. I listed everything I care about—the garden, digging, singing, writing about almost everything except politics.

They asked what Ombre e Luci is, because there was a photo on the screen and then a video of the Bicoca that I'd mentioned earlier. With the foreign girls, when someone speaks English, I get a bit lost hearing slang I don't know. Toward the end I told the presenter that I can read English. Other boys, with Claudio and Daniele Cogliandro, did a little scene about integrated theater—a subject Alessandra Ruggieri knows well because she teaches those of us who act.

Then they asked us to do a mime and say the word that represents Fede e Luce for me. I thought about it and said "company." After that we sang the Community Song, which all fifty people in this master's program can sing. Some of the others talked about different things, like Maria Agnese Boitani did when she spoke about Fede e Luce.

Giovanni Grossi

Giovanni Grossi

I was born in Rome in 1970, to Lorenzo Grossi and Paola Pisenti. I attended kindergarten in Milan and in Pomigliano D'Arco, elementary school and first year of middle school in Pomigliano D'Arco, and…

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