"I served as a curate for several years. My superior, the pastor, couldn't stand children and had an enormous love for dogs. Ever since, I've had a deep aversion to dogs and an enormous love for children." Don Romano says this with a laugh—he's the pastor of S. Maria di Coromoto. In fact, dogs aside, his attention and love for children and for "the smallest" in general truly mark his pastoral work.
For 11 years, the group "Friends of S. Giovanni di Dio"—about 40 young people with disabilities and 60 to 70 volunteers—has met regularly for workshop activities three times a week in two large rooms of the parish center. Don Romano created the group and has protected it from the beginning: he asked for volunteer help and continues to request it, he invited experts to train volunteers and organize the work and activities, he personally led the entire group—young people, parents, and volunteers—through lessons in basic catechesis. Meetings with struggling parents or volunteers in crisis happen routinely. The big exhibitions and sales of the group's work are significant events in parish life. When we ask him—referring to the letter from a mother to the bishops—how and how much the group's life interferes with actual liturgical activities, the examples come tumbling out in his booming voice, in no particular order. But first he makes a point. You have to accept things as they happen. It's pointless to "go looking for salt in the soup"—that is, to hunt for particular situations to prove something—but instead to wait, respect the requests that come to you, not fear trying new solutions, and have faith. "When a mother asked if her adult disabled son could receive Confirmation, not just him but six young people with various challenges were admitted to the youth Confirmation preparation group, which met at eight in the evening. Accompanied by one or more volunteer friends, they stayed as long as they could and wanted. Some followed almost everything, some got tired quickly or made a little noise. When necessary, one or another would be taken outside, but some of them said things that brought perfect silence and gave us shivers," don Romano concludes like the good Tuscan he is.
In the parish there are several disabled children who made their First Communion with the others. A child preparing for Confirmation with the others is also an altar server. Another, more severely disabled, read an intention at last Sunday's ten o'clock Mass with a friend. "Of course they get restless sometimes, they make noise, but that doesn't worry me, and no one is shocked if during the Consecration I have to say: 'This is my Body... and'—turning to the children kneeling around the altar—'shhhhh, be quiet!'"
Don Romano tells us again that it's essential not to rush into things. You have to think carefully and organize well before you decide in this area. If you start a journey with a disabled young person and then abandon it because unforeseen difficulties arise that you don't know how to overcome, you wound the young person and his parents, and it will be very difficult to rebuild the relationship and restore the trust that is necessary between us and them.
We ask don Romano what the foundation of his pastoral work is. Two things, he tells us: the Friends group and the children preparing for First Communion. Everything else radiates from there—so many other activities. The smallest first; it has to be that way because "you have no right to proclaim the Gospel of faith if you don't first proclaim the Gospel of charity," don Romano declares, already ushering us out because someone else is waiting to see him.
—Tea Cabras, 2004