Do you love Jesus? Then that's enough…" On via Benucci, almost like a family motto, it had become Mariangela's and my greeting. Gently irreverent; good-naturedly cynical; respectfully irreligious; above all, it evoked the shared pieces of our life and identity there (Father Alberto Parisi and Mother Pantanella; San Roberto Bellarmino and the Nazareth; Father Giorgio Flick and Father Cascino "who collapses"; the founding of Santa Silvia and the passing of the torch between Don Marcello and Don Antonino…).
I met Mariangela and Paolo fifty years ago. I'd gone to visit their siblings on via Benucci at the request of the legendary Bertolini sisters—Mimma and Toti especially—and I found a world that would soon become mine, thanks to them, and my second home.
I had recently arrived in Rome, alone and bent over my studies for the magistracy exam, practically friendless and homeless, in a furnished room (if you could call it that) on via Gregorio VII. I had left my large family behind in Genoa. Moving to via Benucci—where the community sent me, to the attic on the top floor, where I would stay for ten years, first alone and then with my wife Simonella—felt like entering a second family. One of those precious, essential "social formations where personality develops," as Article 2 of the Constitution describes them.
It was chaos: constant footsteps on the stairs, big people and small ones. Happy confusion—adults, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, children including Nanni, whom Mariangela and Paolo unwisely (given my laziness) made me godfather to, and our first two daughters, Caterina and Alessandra.
It was a world of serenity. Mountain songs and litanies about "the cow and the mule." Gossip about the neighbors and acquaintances. Plans for holidays (from Donoratico to Cogne). Political arguments. Dinners where we'd slip into Mariangela's place and find her always ready to welcome us. Endless discussions with Paolo about history or music. Reflections on the great themes of Vatican II and the clash between progressives and conservatives (I was regarded with suspicion, placed firmly in the latter camp).
Over that world, always serene and unshakeable, Mariangela presided with her smile. A smile that never dimmed, even when her eldest daughter, Bimbolina, left us. I remember especially Mariangela's calm that evening before Bimbolina's farewell Mass at Santa Silvia—a grief without tears, if I can say it without drowning in sentiment.
With that same calm, Mariangela "governed" the flow of life—of lives, really—in the building. The problems were many (her siblings; their families; her teaching; her work with Fede e Luce), exhausting, endless. Yet I always saw her smiling, capable of a kind word, ready to listen.
Then life carried us away from our almost-family on via Benucci. We kept in touch, but less and less often. Distance within Rome itself. And my own bad habit of throwing myself headlong into work, putting it before everything else. A habit that only got worse as time went on.
Two years ago, when we all gathered at Santa Silvia one evening for Mariangela and Paolo's anniversary, a bit older but still recognizable, I found the same climate, the same calm—tired and tested, perhaps, but still there in us older ones and in the generation after us. I felt a tug of nostalgia and deep gratitude for Mariangela. The credit for that climate, at least for me, belonged above all to her.
It is the climate Mariangela left us at Sant'Andrea Hospital and at Santa Silvia, that Saturday morning when we said goodbye to her. It didn't feel, certainly, like the last time.
At her funeral Mass, I was reflecting on the readings. Saint Paul's letters struck me as complicated—dense, sometimes tedious (I once told Mariangela that the 118th letter to the Ephesians began, "But when you answer?"). Then I found a passage I could understand, one that moved me: the hymn to love in the first letter to the Corinthians (13:1-13): "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…"
I have reread that passage many times. I like to think that when Saint Paul wrote it, he was describing Mariangela's life and witness in advance. And I want to thank her for the lesson she left us—in a world of globalization and corruption spinning backward.
Giovanni Maria Flick, 2014