Some people need no last name to be remembered. Everyone simply called you by your first name, as if you were family. You didn't even need to add "Carla's mother," because that was obvious: wherever you went, a few steps ahead of you was your big "girl," announcing you like a butler: "My mother's here, do you see her?"
You were one of the first mothers in Fede e Luce when we started in Rome. From that distant 1974—when we began walking together and planting the first seeds of this "thing" we didn't quite understand—until yesterday, when you left us for Heaven, you lived out the spirit and the concrete reality of Fede e Luce in the most complete way. Simply put, you gave yourself body and soul.
A Gift for Welcome
Your life, spent with dedication and no small sacrifice, had prepared you to embrace with enthusiasm what was asked of you and what you chose to give, personally: you fully became a "mother in Fede e Luce."
With sharp intelligence and a generous heart, you knew how to sense and put into practice what belonged to you—first as Carla's mother, and then, gradually, as mother to all: to the other parents, for whom you were support, strength, inspiration, and friend; to the young people who filled your modest home, turning it into a restaurant (how good your food was!), a meeting room (how many meetings you held there!), a chapel for prayer; to priests and seminarians (white, black, from Rome or Belgium or France) to whom you sought guidance and counsel, yet they found in you warmth, trust, and peace.
In this welcome you always offered with grace, calm, and a love of living, your Alberto was always present—smiling, patient, quiet—and your Carla, happy as you were to have guests who were welcome, adopted by her as older brothers and sisters, because you had adopted them as sons and daughters.
Many came to Fausta's house. Many passed through. What you knew how to offer was never just food or affection. For everyone, for each person, you went beyond concern for small things; you knew how to listen and understand what lay beneath, in the lives of those who came to you: with reserve and gentleness, with a convincing smile born from your own many sorrows, you made sure that the other person, each time, would "sit a little closer," as the fox tells the little prince, and forge with you a deep bond, an alliance you never let fall away.
Your Big Girl
Was it Carla who taught you to be so present in the lives of others? Was your big girl—whom you wanted to keep near you to the end—who suggested to you that only this way, with this maternal welcome for all, could you ensure her a safe, natural protection for when you were no longer here? Was it Carla, in short, who taught you the way of that Jesus you always tried to know truly, without too many difficult words—the kind you asked about when you invited priests for a spiritual retreat with your community?
I see—oh, how far away!—your radiant face nodding yes. But I think you want to add something to these words. Yes, I understand, Fausta, forgive me: I could not and would not write everything that is missing. You will say it—to the heart of all your family and friends—now that you are even more wise than before: that something more which is invisible to the eye and beyond the reach of any pen.
- Mariangela Bertolini, 1999