Casa Betania welcomes mothers in precarious situations and the children born and raised within its walls. It then helps these mothers and their children move toward independence. Casa Betania also takes in children with severe disabilities—children whose mothers cannot manage to raise them alone. This is why a large share of Casa Betania's energy and resources goes to building and sustaining a culture of welcome, which in practice means adoptions, foster placements, and group homes.
Since its founding in 1993, Casa Betania has cared for roughly one hundred and forty children and worked with more than seven hundred volunteers.
Over the years, more and more of the mothers who arrive are non-European, with or without legal residency, homeless, jobless, or working only sporadically. Many carry wounds inflicted by men they once trusted, traumatic experiences, the contempt and disorientation that stuns a young refugee with no protection.
In 1983, Giuseppe and Silvia Dolfini, with their four children, planted the first seed of Casa Betania by welcoming into their home a young woman and her newborn. Together with them and other families open to hospitality, they formed the Social Cooperative "L'Accoglienza."
In 1992, the Calasanzian Sisters gave the cooperative free use of a school building between Primavalle and Pineta Sacchetti, on Rome's western edge.
The building was completely renovated. Among the volunteers who worked tirelessly there was Father Antonino Ruffolo, a worker-priest and member of the S. Francesco di Fede e Luce community. Many remember him—he died of cancer in 1993—for his uncompromising faith, his rough manner, and his unsentimental, genuine love for the most wounded.
The House
Casa Betania is designed to hold, along with Silvia and Giuseppe Dolfini (59 and 77 years old) and their two youngest children (19 and 23), five or six small children in temporary or permanent foster care, usually with health problems—sometimes severe, and often with unnecessary hospitalizations behind them—and three or four mothers welcomed from late pregnancy until they can stand on their own feet.
Kitchen, living room, and bathrooms are shared: the Dolfini family lives alongside the mothers and children in their care and the volunteers. The house employs several permanent staff and many volunteers working in whatever roles suit their skills and availability. The city of Rome contributes to the house's expenses.
Because of Casa Betania's specific mission, and the needs it has uncovered, other structures and initiatives have grown up around its core.
The Apartments
The first nearly insurmountable obstacle mothers with young children face when leaving Casa Betania is finding housing. No landlord will rent an apartment, however shabby, to a foreign woman with a child and no steady job. The cooperative "L'Accoglienza" rents apartments for two or three mothers with their children not far from the house, guaranteeing the landlord payment and asking the mother to contribute what she can afford. Mothers stay roughly a year this way (though the period often stretches longer), then begin looking for more independent arrangements, making room for others leaving Casa Betania.
Since women from very different cultures and often traumatic histories can find cohabitation difficult, each apartment is "supported" by a volunteer family who take on a quasi-parental role. They handle both practical tasks—reading meters, arranging vaccinations, repairs and maintenance—and human support. The apartments, currently about ten in number and housing roughly fifteen mothers with about twenty children (though numbers shift regularly), receive no public funding.
Day Center "Beehive"
Established in 2000, it serves children with no place in a nursery or preschool, and older children during after-school hours and school holidays while mothers work. Watching through the glass as a dozen two- and three-year-olds of different races play or eat—vivid, serene, intensely curious about the stranger observing them—offers one of Casa Betania's most beautiful, consoling, and meaningful sights.
An exhilarating if exhausting experience is doing repair or construction work in the afternoon when the older children return from school. Suddenly you're surrounded by half a dozen six- to nine-year-olds, different nationalities, all speaking perfect, rapid Italian with Roman inflections, eager to help and jealous of every task given to someone else. The work becomes complicated and grinds to a halt, but laughter, surprises, and human lessons are guaranteed.
Throughout the year, the Day Center serves about fifty children across different schedules.
Then You Understand
The meeting room at Casa Betania has a wall that is a folding door. Open it and you see the red sanctuary lamp behind it, a small tabernacle, a crucifix, a small wooden Holy Family figure—a small altar.
Here Father Luca celebrates Mass. Everyone stands close together but "properly," children included, quietly absorbed in their own affairs on the mat. The young priest's words—spare, clear, visibly true—come in his thin frame, dressed as it happens beneath his white vestment. He can barely squeeze between the people with the chalice and the plate of hosts. Then you understand deeply what Communion is.
Workshop and Shop "From Every Land"
To help some mothers learn a trade and earn an income, a workshop was started for cutting, sewing, and making various objects. There, beyond learning, they repair and alter clothing, make decorative items, bags, linens, keepsakes, party favors, and more.
The new, expanded workspace is at Via Cairo Montenotte 65.
The House of Chala, Andrea, and Miriam
The more or less severely disabled children Casa Betania takes in, after months or years of care that expand their possibilities, need placement if they are not adopted. They require a more "family-like" and less "busy" environment than Casa Betania itself. So in 2002 the first (a second is now opening) family-style home was established with three or four children, one or two permanent caregivers, and a team of professional staff and volunteers.
The first house, near Casa Betania, shelters three children aged 4, 6, and 9 with severe disabilities (Chala, Miriam, and Andrea, as they are known). Life in their new "family" has brought them remarkable growth, especially in their capacity for relationship and independence.
The house centers on Paola, a nun assigned by her congregation to this work, and rotates professional staff and volunteers as needed for care and support. The staff bring long experience as Casa Betania volunteers and are guided and trained by specialists.
A second similar house, for four children leaving Casa Betania, will open this year.
Volunteers
More than seven hundred have worked at Casa Betania over the years, for periods short and long. Without them, the Dolfini family's original impulse would never have had the impact it has.
Each volunteer takes on a specific task for a specific time.
The volunteers are remarkably diverse. Young women and men, couples, tradespeople, elderly people, young Italians in civil service, foreigners (twelve) engaged in European Voluntary Service.
At Casa Betania, the defense of life is not abstract doctrine but hard practice—marked by fear and suffering, yet rich with love and moments of "perfect joy."
Here, truly, without any rhetoric—observes a volunteer after two hours spent hand-clearing a drain—you feel better than after two hours at the theater in your best dress and polite company.
For more information: Website
Sergio Sciascia, 2006