When I think about Fede e Luce, I tell myself I've been incredibly lucky. Fausta, Carla's mother, used to say it to me all the time. "You know, you've been so lucky to find Fede e Luce," she'd say. What kind of life would I have had otherwise? Just me and Carla and her father Alberto, alone. I would never have met all of you. I wouldn't have had all these friends. My home is always open now. That, for me, has always been the heart of Fede e Luce—a gift. What would my life have looked like without it? I don't know. But I'm certain I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun, and I wouldn't have nearly as many friends.
You ask me, well, so what exactly is Fede e Luce? You're asking me, and I've known it since I was 18—I'm 54 now. "So you must have formed some idea by now…"
I like to think that each of us has come to our own understanding, carrying all the feelings this experience brings with it. I like to think we share some constants: community, our young people, and the joy of encounter. Every one of us, by being part of Fede e Luce, has witnessed and felt at least these three things. You feel them the moment you walk in, and you keep feeling them even when you find you can't leave.
It's a microcosm of relationships, sacrifice, suffering, vacations, celebrations, and funerals. A living community—sometimes struggling hard, sometimes renewing itself, sometimes dying.
So let's talk about the feelings. The one you get when you share what you're living through. The excitement of those first moments (I'm not doing anything special, really, just lending a hand). The anxiety that comes when you realize you can't help without entering into relationship—and these relationships are "special," "different," and they make you vulnerable and exposed. Everyone could tell their own stories; I have too many to fit on this page. But the greatest one for me is feeling part of a community—your community, and the regional community, and the provincial one—knowing you're part of a community spread across the whole world. I was so fortunate. When I lived that international dimension, I was never alone. There was Corrado with me, and Ciaccia, Fausta, Frank, Paola Maiolo, Rossana, Carla, Pietro, Antonio, Annarosa—I could fill pages and pages with faces, with adventures and stories. But I've been given a tremendous gift.
This is the gift I want to commend to you, especially in the difficult moments—when we don't know how to answer the questions that come from parents and their children, when we're alone and growing older, small in the face of illness. It was truly a blessing to find Fede e Luce. Maybe it didn't make us better people, but it certainly brought us all joy together.
—Stefano Di Franco, Provincial Coordinator, Kimata, 2015
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