Tell us about yourself.
I'm Cristina, almost 37 years old, born to two capable parents—and that saved me. I live in Valtellina and work as a kitchen aide in a kindergarten. Three years ago I entered the Ordo Virginum in the Diocese of Como, alongside another woman named Anna. I live at home with my mother, father, and brother. My sister is married with two beautiful daughters, Ines who's three and Martina who's eight. We have a dog named Squot, from the Netherlands, technically my brother's—though I'd like one of my own.
What does a consecrated person in the Ordo Virginum do?
The same things any committed Christian does. It's not that much different, really. What changes is a person's heart, not her life. I'm the one who changed—my heart, not my circumstances.
I still do my job, part-time, one hour a day. I just got back from Sardinia for a conference on Down syndrome. There were parents, special education teachers, and social workers. It was a wonderful experience.
Through Anfass, I reach out to parents of young children in Valtellina, and when parish priests ask me, I give testimony in marriage preparation courses.
I do theater—Playback Theatre, maybe you know it. Real emotions, real sensations, true stories go on stage. The joys, the sorrows, what the audience feels. Our young actors improvise it all, with special, particular forms. Everything happens in the moment.
I did a piece recently with original music composed by a talented director. We do these performances at events that involve the disability world.
With another company of psychologists and psycho-pedagogues, I'm the only disabled person. Though "disabled" is a heavy word. "Differently abled" is better.
What do you tell parents when you meet them? What do you talk about?
I talk about what I live, my experience, who I am and who I was and who I want to become. It's simple. Because no one lives only in the present. We live in our past and our future, our dreams, our hopes, our desires.
What questions do parents ask you most often?
They ask for what they need most. If there's an adolescent involved, they ask about my adolescence. If there's a small child, about my childhood.
What made you ask to be consecrated?
Love. Simply love. Love in person—Christ, Son of God, and I want to be clear about that—he told me: "The time has come for you to follow me, to become something in my hands, for me to shape you as I choose." I said: "I don't know what you have in mind, but I trust you, and I'm coming."
Who told you about this form of consecration?
No one informed me it was possible. At first I thought I was supposed to marry a man. Then I understood that Love was much stronger, and that's what I wanted.
So I asked myself: should I become a nun? But that wasn't it either. They weren't asking me to enter a convent, wear a habit, have an institution backing me up for when I got old. So what was I supposed to do?
A retreat with my parish in Assisi cleared it up for me—through Saint Francis and Saint Clare.
How long were you in Africa?
I visited my aunt, a nun who's been there 25 years, several times. Once for a month and a half, another time nearly five months, and I came back alone with assistance.
Did that time there shape your calling?
Enormously. Those encounters with poverty make you feel fortunate, and they make you ask yourself: why am I in the world? What am I here to be? When you went to the bishop to ask for consecration, what did you have to do?
I wrote a letter—you write a letter when you feel ready. Then we had a conversation.
Cristina, what's your greatest desire for the future?
I have so many, maybe too many. I'd love to cut ties with Italy and go to mission work, but I couldn't do that entirely. I was born here, I live here, and there's so much to do here too! I want to be who I am, do what I do, within the Church.
That's what matters.
A Postscript from Marilena, Cristina's Mother
Some might assume Cristina made this choice because her mother was overly pious and dragged her to church constantly. The truth is, her mother didn't believe at all!
Cristina first felt called to consecration in 1991, after her first trip back from Africa. At first, I underestimated it. We took time to understand because she spoke of something so profound it seemed like an infatuation—the kind that comes and goes as quickly as it arrived.
She went to Africa four times, and when she stayed for several months, my sister, the nun, living alongside her day in and day out, realized that yes, Cristina has Down syndrome with its real difficulties, but intellectually, emotionally, and in her understanding of what she wanted to do, she was fully capable of knowing her own mind and willing her choice. My sister called me to my duty: to help Cristina.
For years we searched for lay consecration options. But she'd come back unsatisfied because the people there were too condescending, treating her like a small child to protect, asking her painfully simple questions. When someone would say, "What a good girl you are," when she was 25 or 26, she'd tell me she couldn't share that kind of experience with people who spoke to her that way. I felt discouraged.
At one point I even wondered if she'd lost her mind. We never pushed her toward church attendance.
Our prayer was always spontaneous, domestic. Even though I have a sister who's a nun, we were never a practicing family.
Then I got my backbone back. I couldn't bear the thought of denying her the one thing she could do like everyone else, when so many other things she had to do within her limits. I realized that simply because she has Down syndrome, people saw her as fourth-rate, when the only thing my daughter could do was assert her capacities. It doesn't matter if there are many or few. Her ability to know what she wanted to do, and especially her spiritual preparation, was no different from anyone else's.
So I took my sister's advice: put her in a position to speak for herself, to show on her own what she could say, do, feel.
The preparation that was supposed to take two or three years stretched to four, then five. The waiting began to put her in a difficult psychological place, because the goal never seemed to materialize. Until March 2006, when the longed-for permission came.
I hope this explains her autonomy of decision better! She always says what I call faith, and I didn't know it was faith. There are no atheists, she says, only believers who don't know they are. She says Jesus eventually waits for everyone somewhere; I arrived late, but it's the extraordinary result Cristina worked in her mother.
Weren't you afraid to send her to Africa?
The first time, she decided to go because her grandmother, who was helping my sister there, was alone and needed company. We gave her fewer gifts that Christmas, as she'd asked, and bought her a ticket to Africa. The family thought we were insane, but she was certain. She was 19, had finished school, and hadn't started work yet.
She was brave to go, but we'd always encouraged her to separate from us since childhood, even though we knew it would hurt us a little so she could do it. At eight, I sent her to camp two weeks away from home. We always believed she needed to be helped to gradually break free from us parents—something many mothers struggle to do. We did all this without psychologists or psycho-pedagogues, who weren't within reach in the 1970s. Of course we went forward with fears and uncertainties, but we tried to do only things that would serve her.
Now she's nudging me because she doesn't want me to say how much she does beyond what she's told you. She takes prayer seriously, with remarkable regularity and a real gift for directing it toward those who truly need it. When we went to see the Pope, she recommended the young and the sick to him. Stupidly, I pointed out that she'd left out the elderly and the well, but she said that in "the young and the sick" she holds everyone who needs her prayers. What does an elderly person who's healthy need?
Her other commitments include helping with catechesis and witnessing at meetings with young people in middle and high schools. I think this is very positive because changing ethics doesn't mean forcing people to think a certain way—it means making them think almost without noticing. When religion teachers bring her into lessons, she's truly able to make middle and high school students reflect on life's values and the talents we have and how to cultivate them. At first they seem to wonder what she could possibly teach them, but they leave class with their heads down, thanking her and returning later to what she discussed.
Edited by the Editorial Team, 2009