The first to call them after word of the presidential honor spread was Marco Colangione. From his wheelchair, his voice uncontained with joy and tears, he needed to reach out to two friends he has known nearly his whole life, Matteo Mazzarotto and Ivana Perri—to tell them how right and deserved was the Order of Merit they would receive on November 29 at the Quirinal Palace.
The citation honors "their dedication to inclusion and support for the future of people with severe cognitive and sensory disabilities"—a phrase Matteo himself asked the Quirinal press office to add, underscoring the "after us" dimension. For thirty years, they have lived alongside people with serious mental and physical disabilities in a space unusual for its kind in Rome. The compound on Via Strampelli, built on rural land donated by the Francesco Gammarelli Foundation in the countryside of the Decima Malafede Natural Park and opened in 2004, sits amid olive groves and cultivated fields. Around two large paved terraces stand four small buildings: two spacious apartments (the accredited residential units), each housing seven residents, one subsidized and one private, where nine disabled residents currently live. A third module, already designed and approved, awaits construction when funds allow. Beside these apartments stand two multipurpose halls and a building with single-family homes—one occupied by the Mazzarotto family: Matteo, 62; Ivana, 55; and their youngest daughter, Anna, 17. Their two older daughters, Maria (25) and Francesca (22), have lived away from home for their studies.
How did you hear the news?
Matteo: "Someone at the house called to say a man from the Quirinal press office was looking for me and Ivana. At first I thought it was an invitation to Castel Porziano"—the presidential estate, opened in recent summers by President Mattarella to organizations working with disability. "But then I understood. I was silent for several minutes. I didn't know what to say. The man explained what would happen and asked me to keep quiet until the news broke the next day. Once I got over the shock, I called Ivana at work."
Ivana: "He asked if I was alone, if I was sitting down. 'Matte', what happened?' He told me they called from the Quirinal, and I thought about visits to the estate. Then he told me about the honor. I couldn't tell anyone, so I went outside and cried."
Matteo: "That evening we video-called our three daughters. We wanted them to know together, before the news went public. Anna was home—she didn't understand why we were calling; the older two were surprised because we never do video calls. What struck us both most was Maria's reaction—she's studying engineering at the Polytechnic in Turin. 'About time, finally!' It was immediate, visceral, unexpected. She wasn't thinking of something we'd been waiting for. She said it thinking of us. And I think she was responding to something she'd lived through —the value and the cost of a path she didn't choose, as we did, but grew up in. Now all three are settled, but we don't fully know what's in their lived experience."
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The next day, as the news spreads, congratulations pour in from across the country. Ivana is from Calabria, from Lamezia Terme, and the word travels fast there with warmth and pride. Calls come from Milan too: communities of Faith and Light have deep roots there, and many remember Matteo when he was the association's national secretary, some twenty years ago. One message stands out—from a mother in one of Milan's Faith and Light communities, Elisa Sturlese. She writes how, as the aging parent of a son with intellectual disability, she and her husband have always hoped their child would be welcomed into a home like theirs—a community created and sustained with courage, dedication, and unmistakable effort—and prayed it would continue to be "a welcoming, safe refuge for all who live there and for others fortunate enough to come."
It's rare to see Matteo moved—not as visibly as Ivana—yet those few lines reach him deeply. Elisa had captured the profound sense and conviction behind Il Carro's founding. Matteo says: "Beyond our feeling and conviction to live by certain values and no others, the drive was this: to be alongside our friends with disabilities, in the name of—not instead of—their families."
"Right now I feel this recognition not just for us, but for a whole world, a need, a matter the President wanted to support"
How do you understand this honor?Ivana: "First and foremost, as recognition for all the families for whom it matters that someone thinks about the future of their disabled loved ones—for those who know us and support us. And I thought of Faith and Light and all those friends who tend relationships with people with intellectual disabilities, faithfully, despite daily struggles. We ourselves were born from those encounters, small rituals that give profound value to individual moments and individual people. I couldn't help but think of Mariangela, Mariella, Viviana, Alberto, and Olga—people who are gone, but who were essential to all of this continuing forward."
Olga, Sabina's mother—one of the women who lives at Il Carro—once spoke of you as having answered a double calling.
Matteo: "She wondered if only someone who had chosen a consecrated life could sustain something like this. Olga had her own particular Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. When she would say—and I cannot recall it without tears—'Now I can die because Sabina is with you,' she also carried worry that we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the daily reality of care and our family's needs. And it hasn't always been smooth. But now I feel this recognition is not just for us in particular, but for a whole world, a need, a matter the President wanted to support. It's also a call to all of Il Carro and those who make it possible. We feel part of one history. I sense it as a strengthening of the meaning Faith and Light has lived out. I feel equal to those who, even elsewhere, live faithful encounters, the effort of keeping in touch. We've embodied it in a particular way as a family, but I realize that's not given to everyone."
Looking back, what stands out most?
Matteo: "More than anything else, how we began: a group of friends in 1990 who chose to share communal life with friends who have disabilities. As Il Carro went through various transformations—staff changes, personal upheavals, new regulations, different locations—sharing daily life, responsibility, and the inevitable weight of it is what we felt the loss of most. Of course it was hard to assume such an arrangement could last; we didn't always find the right way to involve people. But what we learned, what we had to adapt to, is that things move in their own direction regardless of our will.
Ivana: "We started as six, then nine, then two. We married, had a family, built a structure, hired staff, organized operations, reassigned roles, brought in professional managers. It's been constant adaptation to new demands, always trying to improve things, giving necessary forms and substance to our life but keeping a constant—a red thread—that preserved a different way of seeing, attention to what mattered to us. I kept repeating the words of Father Benedetto Tuzia"—the parish priest of Santa Silvia, which served two Faith and Light communities and played a key role in Il Carro's founding—"'to have patience, that what we were doing was not in vain.' Such hard work. I didn't want to leave my own job, which felt important to me and my family—and I still believe that. In the old farmhouse on the Portuense road that we had on loan, there were few resources and the place was falling apart. But the communal living was so beautiful it nourished me for the years to come. Maria and Francesca were born while we were still there. When we moved here, everything changed. It was hard to adapt, but necessary."
How are things now?
Matteo: "Inevitably shaped by the pandemic. Living in the countryside helped a little, but we were buried under health regulations with no public support whatsoever. Every expense fell on us. Getting our residents vaccinated was a real odyssey, and now it starts again with the booster shots. We were treated like a nursing home for regulatory purposes, even though we're not one—like so many normative issues in the past, everything became more complicated."
Ivana: "Last year I felt truly abandoned. A terrible period that peaked with Alberto's death. Knowing he died of COVID contracted during a hospital stay, away from here—it's very difficult. In some ways it's a miracle the virus never entered the house, despite staff coming and going constantly. They were very present, always showing real unity. But it has to be said: it was an awful time."
Matteo: "Yes, after this past year and a half so difficult, alone without any help—I thought this recognition somehow redeems what we've been through."
What about the future?
Matteo: "Now that Il Carro is being held up—not necessarily as a model, but as something with meaning and possibility—I feel it as a commitment. To lighten the mood: if I thought I might slow down now that I'm almost 63, it seems I won't be able to. What happens when Ivana and I can't do this anymore?"
Ivana: "We have to think about the after-us. I say it all the time."
Matteo: "We've lived day by day, trying to enter situations and face them as they came. For now these are questions without urgency, but we have to ask them and understand what to work toward. I don't imagine so much an 'after' as alongside. Of course, after this period the financial outlook isn't rosy. I've said for thirty years that it's a miracle Il Carro stays standing—now the difficulties are greater. But we know providence exists. To be realistic, it probably won't remain as it is; changes will come as they have in the past. A family continuing in our same way won't be easy. But it will be important to keep walking in the acquired style, not necessarily the same one. As long as the idea of Il Carro survives. People change; what we live with are human realities and they change. We accompany the story and see where it takes us."