Finally, I found it! It's called Casa della Carità — the House of Charity. Actually, Houses of Charity, because there are about thirty of them now, including the latest one opened this December in Rome, in the Magliana neighborhood (casadellacarita.it).
The name doesn't sound like much, but the reality is literally revolutionary. The House of Charity provides stable shelter — in an institution that is exactly like a large family — for people who have been rejected and have nowhere else to go. The House is entrusted to the parish and the responsibility of the parish community, and is led by one or two members of the Marian Congregation of the Houses of Charity.
The Houses make no agreements with public bodies — that is, they don't ask for money from the state.
To describe the history, character, and meaning of these Houses, I rely on the words of Brother Romano Zanni, a priest and the current (in 1989, ed. note) prior general of the congregation. I went to meet him at the House in Reggio Emilia.
The Christian community does help these poor to some extent. But it doesn't place them at its center. The Houses of Charity, on the other hand, are at the heart of the parish.
The Christian community does help these poor to some extent. But it doesn't place them at its center. The Houses of Charity, on the other hand, are at the heart of the parish.Before I go on, though, I want to explain that initial "finally." We know many beautiful and deeply human institutions run by the Church, religious congregations, and various associations (including l'Arche of Jean Vanier, from which Fede e Luce and this magazine itself descend). Yet they are not at the center of that basic cell of the Christian community: the parish.
And yet Jean Vanier, Cardinal Martini (as we heard him say at the Fede e Luce Communities gathering in Assisi in 1987), and the best voices in the Church keep telling us that as Christians we must put the "poor" at the center — indeed, at the very heart — of the Christian community. It is around this poor person, who is like Christ, the Gospel warns us, that the Christian community can recover a sense it seems to be losing with increasing difficulty. The Christian community does help these poor (poor in health, in education, in mental or physical capacity, in money). But it doesn't keep them at its center. It provides them with homes or institutions, sometimes beautifully appointed and scientifically up-to-date and full of charity, but always separate. The Houses of Charity, by contrast, are at the heart of the parish.
This reality — which, if we Christians are not blind and deaf to the Gospel, can be a fundamentally new seed in the Church — was born in 1940 in Fontanaluccia, a small village high in the Apennines near Passo delle Radici in the Modena area, so remote it wasn't even reached by a road. There, as Brother Romano tells it, in 1938 a new parish priest arrived: Don Mauro Prandi.
The village lived in a poverty that those who have not seen it cannot understand. There were some people with mental disabilities, some severe. Two years later, when war broke out and men were called to the front while women had to do all the work in the meager fields, the forests, and the home, these people with disabilities were left more than ever to fend for themselves through most of the day, exposed to moral dangers. At first Don Mario thought of placing them in some charitable institution like the Cottolengo in Turin, but that would have cut them off entirely from their family and village life.
Don Mario, who preached to his parishioners that the poor are "the treasure of the Church," according to the words of St. Lawrence in the Acts of the Martyrs, asked himself and his community: would it not be absurd to deprive ourselves of them?
Close to the church, at the heart of the community, people with mental disability go to Mass on Sunday, they can go out, they are watched over by the community, they are not separated from their surroundings.
A woman from the village, who had two daughters with mental disabilities, gave her little house to the parish on the condition that her daughters be taken in there. People gathered sand from the river, wood from the forest; they fixed up the house, painted it, furnished it with essentials. Some girls took turns serving there as volunteers. It was a house of the parish, maintained and cared for by the community! Close to the church, at the heart of the community, people with mental disability go to Mass on Sunday, they can go out, they are watched over by the community, they are not separated from their surroundings.It all began so simply, with the idea that just as there is a tabernacle in the parish that holds the Eucharist, there must be another that holds the other presence of Jesus — the "poor."
Don Mario soon realized that to give the work continuity, it needed a consecrated soul within it, and he began looking for sisters. But everything was lacking: a road, electricity, a telephone. The sisters who arrived couldn't hold out. So he started the practice of sisters consecrating themselves within the house itself, and the first was Maria, a young volunteer who is now mother general. But the Houses of Charity always kept their defining character: they are works of the parish, rooted in the parish. In the Houses, the sisters and later the brothers of Charity, who are consecrated, guarantee continuity, but the service and the work are guaranteed by the parish community. This original character anticipated Vatican II by many years, along with the principle of integrating people with disabilities into society. There, close to the church, at the heart of the community, they go to Mass on Sunday, they can go out, they are watched over by the community, they are not separated from their surroundings.
Other priests, seeing especially the spiritual fruits of the work, asked for other Houses of Charity: today there are 15 in the Reggio area, 3 in Modena, 3 in Bologna, 1 each in Parma, Vicenza, Florence, and Rome, 6 in Madagascar, and 1 in India. The last ones are expressions of the missionary work of the diocese, not of an institution. When the first group of 11 people left, it included priests, sisters, lay people, and married couples.
This connection between the Houses and the diocese, with the parish, is revolutionary. "We," Brother Romano insists, "are diocesan in the fullest sense — not just as a matter of law, but in concrete reality, because we animate the charity of the parish and the diocese." Wherever this initiative is established, it begins by stirring up solidarity at the level of pity: people think about finding help for "those poor folks." This is the opposite of the House's spirit.
But then people discover in the poor the capacity to give meaning to reality, to put things in perspective, and finally they discover their richness — the gift of grace that God wants to give through them. "Regularly we see the shift from pity for the poor person to seeing in that poor person a brother or sister who can teach us."
The house then becomes the center of the parish, partly because it becomes a model of life — of simplicity, fraternity, witness, and communal rebuilding. People of vastly different ages and conditions live together in an unusual harmony. The house becomes a center for revitalizing the parish community.
The buildings of the Houses are always the property of the parishes. We ask that the parish priest be the father of the house, even if the sister will handle the daily tasks.
Don Mario insisted that charity is essential to the life of the parish. A Eucharist that does not flow into care for the last in the community is a mutilated Eucharist. Established by Christ as a gift of life, it cannot be that those who take part in it do not in turn give life to others. The bishop of Reggio Emilia, Baroni, a strong supporter of the Houses of Charity, said that the House allows the Eucharist to be true. And Monsignor Nervo, former president of Italian Caritas, said in a homily that a Eucharist that does not go to the poor is an abortion — because it is a principle of life that dies right there in the liturgical moment. The Houses of Charity, the bishop says, are eucharistic houses because they live from the Eucharist, but above all they become living Eucharists.
The Church must return to this: it has always been its fundamental problem. The Eucharist as a liturgical act entered the Church without trouble, but, as we read in the earliest documents, a tendency immediately arose to make it a "beautiful" ceremony that ended there. And so began the terrible divide between faith and life, between the Sunday liturgy and the weekday world. "The fact that next to the eucharistic tabernacle there is one in which — as we say — we adore Christ in the poor, gives continuity to the liturgy."
There are also the social, educational, and therapeutic aspects of this experience. The "family" style of life has brought about incredible recoveries, both of elderly people and of those with mental disabilities, which have astonished specialists, even those who were skeptical at first encounter with this reality.
"A charity that flows from these premises of faith, that flows from the Eucharist, leads you to a total gift, and it brings about among the guests themselves — we don't call them residents — mutual help, listening to one another, certainly with disagreements and quarrels too, but in the end we find ourselves united in the Eucharist, which we celebrate every day in the Houses."
For each House there is a group of lay people from the parish who come with their friendship and also with their technical skill. "Among the brothers and sisters of the Marian Congregation of the Houses of Charity, we are about 110 scattered around the world, but there are also about seven hundred people who have committed themselves by receiving the crucifix from the bishop's hands — that is, by receiving an extraordinary mandate to serve the poor in the name of the Church, within the Congregation, in the spirit of service to humanity in whom we recognize Jesus. The strength of this congregation lies therefore in that lay community, which includes families who live in their own homes the spirit of the Houses of Charity, having taken in people in difficulty.
"Last October," Brother Romano recounts, "we renewed our vows at a great ceremony in the Basilica della Ghiara. There were more than three thousand people. Our vows are temporary — first for a year, then for three, then for another three, and finally we take permanent vows.
The family character that we have kept in the Houses has put us somewhat at odds with public entities that follow different ideas about care. The family — with elderly people, adults, children — remains the natural and privileged place for people to develop and recover.
Public agencies object: you are not a family bound by blood. True, but love is much stronger than bonds of blood. We have stories of incredible recoveries thanks to this family reality, which have even been subjects of scientific study. For instance, psychiatric patients who attempted suicide repeatedly in the asylum have never tried again after being taken in at our Houses. In the Houses we live a full family life. Each person does what they can precisely because they feel part of the family's life. The Houses run on the work of the sister, on volunteer service, but very much also on the mutual help of the guests.
The Houses sustain themselves without public funds. There is God's providence — far more abundant and attentive than the state in providing — and we have never lacked anything, not even during the war when hunger was common everywhere. In the House at Fontanaluccia, converted into a partisan hospital with about fifty wounded (Italian, German, English, American, Russian — all together), we never went hungry.
Whoever comes to live in the Houses, as happens in every family, brings with them their own income (pension, allowance...), and then there is God's providence. At the end of the year there is always something left over, so much so that we put in the bylaws that whatever is left over at year's end is given away, so we don't fall into the temptation to accumulate.
We have had inspections from the health authority and from the carabinieri's fraud unit. They come, they look, they write reports: so far we have had no problems, also because there is an open dialogue with the regional and provincial assessors. They have great respect for this work, even though public agencies struggle to accept that something can function without their intervention.
We have been criticized for bringing together people with very different problems. We answer: if you believe this experience is valid, as you yourselves say it is, it is valid because of its method and its spirit — so don't force us to change it, or we would have to shut down rather than ruin this spirit. And this spirit itself proves to be a rehabilitation technique that allows people with mental disabilities to live a normal, open life, integrated into a community, loved in a social context where they can express themselves.
- Sergio Sciascia, 1989
Alda and "her" little girl
The nine-year-old girl was severely spastic, lying still, barely able to move. The only sound she made was a cry.
She was brought to one of the Houses of Charity and, as usual, was entrusted to a "sister." There was Alda, an elderly woman. "Alda," we said to her, "will you look after her? Will you take care of her?"
Alda sat down next to the girl and talked to her, shooed away the flies, adjusted her blanket. She went on like that all day. She kept it up for almost twenty years: the girl became "her" child. She pushed her out in the wheelchair, made sure she didn't catch cold, worried about this and that. And something extraordinary happened: between the two of them a bond formed. They understood each other! Something the girl's mother, who came every day, and the rest of us, had never been able to achieve.
Alda would go to the kitchen and say: the girl is hungry. We'd go and she'd eat in no time. Alda would say: today the girl won't eat, and there'd be no way to get a spoonful down her. Alda would say: the girl has a stomachache, the girl needs the bathroom — and it was always true.
They went on like that until Alda died, three months ago. Alda had predicted it: we will die together. These days the girl is dying.