"Dip your pen in your heart"—I can still hear you say it, the way you always did when you caught me anxious before writing an editorial. Never has your advice seemed more apt, more heartening, more necessary than it does now. It gives me the courage to tell your story.
And already I hear you—as you so often did—murmuring, shy of praise or thanks: "I deserve no credit. It was a joy to help."
Since we first met back in '74 and set about founding Fede e Luce, you gave generously—so generously—your time, your energy, your presence. You visited families trapped in their homes. You reached out to disabled children and young people, asking nothing in return but their gratitude. You did this for people you knew and for strangers you had never met.
You used to say something else, too—when your questions about faith and suffering sparked those long conversations we could never quite resolve, no matter how hard your sharp mind tried. "Look," you would say, "the only thing I understand about this Mystery, as you call it, is that the Gospel means serving those who need it."
Your service was never small. How many times did we face cases so desperate that we felt helpless, certain there was no way out? And then off you would go, driving your car across Rome and across Italy, sparing no effort to find a place for a troubled young man, or to arrange temporary care so a mother could have surgery, or to book a holiday for a boy so his exhausted family could rest. How many times I watched you open your home on a weekend to someone else's turbulent son, giving his desperate parents a reprieve.
There is too much to tell: your thoughtful, delicate, intelligent devotion; the warmth of your listening; the way you gave without measure to those you loved and those you had never met; the daily litany of difficult cases that came to you from everywhere, which you brought urgently to our small office at Ombre e Luci. You filled that place with color and joy, with your almost daily presence.
I have a wicker basket beside me—a gift from you for one of my birthdays. During these long days of your illness, which you bore with silent dignity and pride, I found it filling endlessly with all the varied gifts you gave. In my mind, when I learned you were about to go, I sent it with you—so you could present it to that good God who received you into his arms with a love even greater than the love you gave to his little ones and their parents.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2006