Why did you choose your brother?
When someone asked me this, I hesitated. The question made me stop and think: "Why did I choose my brother?" — "No, I didn't choose my brother. The Lord chose me for him, and for so many boys like him."
If you follow the path of my life, you will see how the Lord guided me by the hand, and how in Giorgio, my younger brother, He gave me a great gift of His love.
I was fifteen years old in 1942, and I was eagerly awaiting a new brother or sister. I was a high school student and loved children.
When Giorgio was born, I was overjoyed, even though he was tiny and fragile—he weighed less than two kilos. The whole family shared my joy: my brothers, my father, my mother. My mother was especially convinced that the baby, despite his difficulties (he was premature, affected by very evident mongolism, unable to cry, unable to nurse, extremely delicate), would recover with proper care and attention.
What devotion my mother showed, giving him milk drop by drop, yet what certainty that Giorgio must survive! The entire family hovered over him with anxious, tender attention. I remember never being touched by the thought that Giorgio might die.
Within a few months, Giorgio became a wonderful child, always ready to smile at our attentions and our calls. It was only years later that I learned Giorgio was mongoloid, but that fact changed nothing. Our worry was simply that he could not go to regular school or be accepted by a private institution that might help him grow.
The problem only drew us closer together and moved us to give our best for him, with serenity and naturalness. He was our littlest brother, and he drew the love and special care of us all.
In fact, those were hard years of war, and Giorgio's presence brought us peace amid suffering: one brother in Germany, another brother in the Resistance, and the threat that our father himself might be deported to Germany.
In those years of war, Giorgio's presence brought us peace amid suffering.
After the war ended, family life resumed its course. Each of us siblings went our separate way.When Giorgio was about eight years old, I persuaded my parents to consult a professor in Florence, and if necessary, to leave him at the Florence Institute where he could be followed for a few years to learn what he could, since our city offered no opportunities for him. The professor examined him and said: "The boy's condition is serious. He will never learn to speak correctly, nor to read and write. If anyone tells you to take him away from his family, do not listen. His need for affection is strong, and the only real school for him is his family. He would suffer too greatly if separated from you, and he would gain nothing." This was exactly what our parents already felt in their hearts.
Giorgio grew up loved by the entire neighborhood (we lived on the outskirts, where genuine friendships still existed), and he spent his days with one person or another.
As the years passed, it became increasingly clear that Giorgio needed to learn something—to organize his life better.
By then I had attended university, earned my degree in pure chemistry, and found work in Milan at Edison. I was away from home most of the time, but I returned to Cremona on weekends to be with my family, spending as much time as possible with my Giorgio, who always awaited me with enthusiasm.
I had begun my career in research in just the way I had hoped. But at the same time, something else was growing in me—a need to decide what ideal my life should serve.
After meeting a Belgian lay missionary woman, I felt that all my education should be placed at the service of the missions, wherever the Lord sent me. I was ready to leave for the motherhouse of the lay missionaries in Belgium.
I spoke about it with my family, and you cannot imagine how strong the opposition was—from my parents and older brothers alike. I decided to delay everything. In the meantime, I could deepen my professional training as well. I should say, though, that my family's opposition, especially my father's, was not because Giorgio was at home and needed help. It was simply that they did not want me to leave.
I confess that even now I relive those days with pain, because that plan was never erased from my heart.
After a year of work in Milan came a proposal to transfer to a research laboratory opening in Piacenza—a chance to move closer to my family. Just when I thought I would have to leave, and I was waiting for a sign, the Lord brought me nearer to my family through this very transfer, and gave me the chance for wonderful professional work that would take me often to Italy and abroad, especially Belgium.
Once in Piacenza, I read some articles in the Corriere about the importance of education for mongoloid boys. I made a decision: I would do something for Giorgio right away. His situation was demanding a real answer.
I found a small apartment and a young teacher willing to work there all day—my job kept me away from home. Once I had both, I had to propose to my family that Giorgio come live with me. I felt some anxiety about their response.
But the Lord always guides our path according to His design. When I came home that weekend, my mother greeted me with these very words: "Listen, Franca, do something for Giorgio! He doesn't listen to anyone anymore. He's always off riding his bicycle."
You cannot imagine my joy when I could answer: "Don't worry, Mamma. I've already thought about this. I found a small apartment and a young teacher who can be there all day. As soon as I furnish the two rooms, Giorgio will come live with me."
A new home, new responsibilities, caring for the house, attention to his spiritual life—all of this benefited Giorgio tremendously.
A new home, new responsibilities, caring for the house, attention to his spiritual life—all of this benefited Giorgio tremendously.Although he was already sixteen, Giorgio gained tremendously from this new arrangement. He worked with a pyrograph and a fretsaw, and managed to copy and make increasingly complete drawings. He learned to keep the house tidy, the house that felt like his own. He grew to love music more and more. In short, he discovered himself, his abilities, his desire to do things, and the joy of knowing how to do many useful things.
Every afternoon he attended the Workshop of the Saveriani Missionaries, where brothers were being trained, and this too was precious for his growth, especially spiritually. With the help and guidance of the Fathers, who loved him, he prepared to receive Communion and Confirmation. The joy with which he experienced that day was wonderful.
The night before the celebration he could not sleep. I still remember how he followed the entire Mass, celebrated by a missionary bishop just for him and our whole family, with such full participation.
My colleagues at work were also very close to Giorgio. When I brought him to the workshop, he felt like he was among family.
All of this gave him more and more confidence, joy in doing things, and faith in himself and others.
When work required me to be away for a few days, Giorgio would return home by himself on the local bus, since the station was near the house, which he knew well. At first the boy was afraid, but I knew the driver would welcome him and look after him. Giorgio gradually grew in confidence and in his ability to be with others.
My work and Giorgio's needs became interwoven in new ways.
I was often in Rome for professional reasons—it seemed the entire laboratory might move there, and I was already thinking about how to care for Giorgio in Rome too—when I met Maria Luisa Menegotto, a mother who, along with other families and friends, had founded the Association of Families with Subnormal Children, ANFFAS.
I understood that it was necessary to help so many families whose struggles I knew from direct experience.
It was a truly providential meeting. Signora Menegotto proposed to me, as a solemn responsibility, that I establish an ANFFAS chapter in Piacenza. The goal was to bring together interested families, to study together the many enduring problems of our boys—problems that remained serious, urgent, and without any solution—and to seek together what answers and what path we should take for them.I confess that this new commitment frightened me. My daily work, the care of Giorgio that took up the rest of my time, my returns to family on weekends—none of this left time to develop connections in the city where I lived.
But I felt a strong responsibility. I understood that it was necessary to help so many families whose struggles I knew from direct experience. In this too, the Lord guided me. Through meetings with Catholic university graduates who gathered to pray, I came to know people capable of helping me.
In 1966, a planning committee formed at a gathering in a family's home. A month later came our first assembly. Then came the founding of the ANFFAS Provincial Section of Piacenza. Within a few months I met many interested families and discovered how many small and grown boys were living in homes, isolated, alone, with no school or workshop to welcome them and help them grow, discover their abilities, use them, become people capable and happy to feel embraced and loved.
We felt driven forward—I, the families, and many friends—to move quickly.
That autumn, we opened the Workshop-School for thirty-six older boys in the rooms of the Asilo Uttini, generously made available by Archbishop Malchiodo, who carried the suffering of these boys and their families in his heart.
Within a few years, more than a hundred boys were attending. You could see joy flowering in them day after day! Their families, too, rediscovered serenity as they watched their boys grow, learn both at school and in work, become conscious of their own abilities, discover what they could do, grow more independent, and develop new interests and desires to do more.
My Giorgio also benefited greatly from the richness of activities and from the constructive relationships with so many friends, teachers, and families who attended our programs.
You can see how complex and vast this work became. Building the Center required dealing with city authorities, regional officials, sometimes ministries—first to raise awareness, then to gain concrete responses, authorizations, and funding. We also had to organize and oversee the actual activities at the Center. It became increasingly difficult to balance this with my professional work. After the Center had been operating for a year, I made the decision to leave my career in research permanently—to work instead with the smallest ones, those who cannot speak for themselves, who cannot make themselves heard or accepted because they are too weak. It is a vast and rich field, one that brings great joy and demands great sacrifice. But we do not walk this path alone, because in every child we meet and love, it is Jesus Himself who teaches us to love with a love given freely, and who urges us to give ourselves completely to Him through the smallest among us.
I left my profession in 1968, and my work with the ANFFAS Workshop-School continued until 1975, when the Center was taken over and run by the Public Authorities, as was their responsibility—though this often happened more for political reasons than in a spirit of genuine service.
When my work at the Piacenza Center ended came another turning point. Giorgio, my mother, and I moved to Forlì to live in a community: the Family Home of Opera Don Pippo. This allowed us to address another very serious and difficult problem: to be a family for those without a family, those in difficulty, and those whose own families could not care for them because of their condition.
Now, after eight years of community life, I can say that the Lord, in His design, guided us by the hand. Through Giorgio, He chose not only me but also my mother to care for His smallest ones. She was a grandmother deeply loved, and her presence—she left us last July—still lives in the hearts of the girls. She showed that the children need not only a mother but also a grandmother, someone to whom they turn when they struggle. Perhaps because a grandmother understands more deeply and welcomes without ever asking. Just as my mother loved Giorgio, so did she love all the boys in Piacenza before, and then all the girls in Forlì. She was always at peace about Giorgio's future, and giving her that peace has been a source of profound joy for me.
And now, in conscience, I can pray: Thank you, Lord, for giving me my Giorgio, and through him, for leading me on a path that has sometimes been hard and difficult, but always rich with so much love.
- Franca Cremonesi, 1985