«Faith and Light is our story, our life, our home, and through Il Carro we have tried to add a real roof—a place of shelter for everyday living. We hope this unexpected honor will be an encouragement to all of Faith and Light, a sign of the faithfulness and responsibility that each of us strives to live out, despite countless difficulties, in our daily lives». This is indeed a profound encouragement from President Mattarella, who honored Matteo Mazzarotto and Ivana Perri with the rank of Officer of Merit of the Republic «for their dedication to the inclusion and support, for life after their parents, of people with severe cognitive and sensory disabilities» in the family home Il Carro. An encouragement that reminds us: the fruits of faithfulness, responsibility, and above all friendship lived at Faith and Light are a story we must cherish and tell.
A story «so fragile and so beautiful,» as Cardinal Martini once said, born at that first great pilgrimage in 1971 to Lourdes. When it ended, the participants simply could not bear to leave. They refused to go back and shut themselves away in their homes. What they had felt was too precious—the belonging to a community of friends, each carrying an intellectual disability of their own or of a child, woven into the very heart of the Church. And yet, as Pope Francis emphasized in his message for the movement's anniversary, «there are still so many today, in the Church and in the world, who in their smallness and fragility are forgotten and excluded».
The cover image—a hand holding a candle in the darkness, inspired by the movement's motto It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness and inscribed in the Golden Book presented to Bergoglio—reminds us that darkness is real, and difficulties abound. But whatever our existential condition or our role in the movement, each of us can make our hearts available, can offer our hands, to the work of the Spirit just as Joseph did—not as the central figure, as Monsignor Intini (the bishop coordinating Faith and Light with the Italian Bishops' Conference) suggests, yet certainly making all the difference when he chose to welcome that Child in whom God became Human to meet us.