Iniziativa Amica (website here) is a residential home for pregnant women and new mothers facing hardship, run by the Sisters of Divine Will together with the Iniziativa Amica association. Its mission is "to serve and defend life, to foster the values of brotherhood and solidarity, and to overcome every form of discrimination based on race and religion."
When I ring the bell at Via degli Orti Spagnoli 108 in Rome, Sister Gasparina opens the door—the veteran of this place, who for more than twenty years has welcomed single mothers. Here they face the birth of their child and the first months of its life with serenity, within the warmth of a family setting. The house sits on the ground floor of a lovely complex behind Via Portuense: large, luminous rooms surrounded on most sides by a well-tended garden. Or at least, that's what I would have noticed had I not arrived in the thick of a boisterous, colorful party. School has just let out. The friends of one of the children staying here have been invited for an afternoon of music, games, and orange juice. Timing could hardly have been worse.
From the exhausted faces around me—children still catching their breath, sisters and volunteers and visiting mothers all visibly spent—it's clear the afternoon has been a success. There's nothing quite like being thrown into someone's daily life to know them a little. And the quiet after the storm turns out to be a perfect moment to listen to Giuliana, the director of the home. With the clear, unsentimental smile of someone who has dedicated her life to loving her neighbor—rolling up her sleeves, refusing both easy sentiment and dangerous enthusiasm—this young sister tells me with passion the story of a place born, like many miraculous things, in silence, yet destined to explode outward.
It all began in the 1950s when a group of young Romans founded a lay association called "Iniziativa Sociale"—Social Initiative—to do something concrete for abandoned children. From the start, "something concrete" meant creating small family units and trying to "reintegrate into social life, in absolute equality, children born outside marriage." It was no easy task in a world that then, as now, turns a deaf ear to the desperate anguish of women who, for whatever reasons, find themselves fragile and alone before the mystery of a life growing within them.
The house on Via degli Orti Spagnoli opened specifically in 1971. It was then that the Sisters of Divine Will were first asked to collaborate. Nine years later, in 1980, the religious community of the Blessed Gaetana Sterni established themselves permanently as a community in the home. As the association's bylaws explain with clarity, the project aims to provide "moral and material support to people in difficulty, including foreign residents in Italy without work or means of support; to protect nascent life and its development when most vulnerable; to create conditions allowing a woman in difficulty to exercise her personal right to motherhood and to reclaim her rightful place in society with dignity."
The idea is not to give fish, but to teach fishing. Not to dispense charity, but to help these women charitably build a future for themselves and their children. It's a far more demanding undertaking—in time, effort, and emotional investment. The home accompanies women only through the delicate, precious moment of pregnancy and birth. Stays average five and a half months. But in that time, the goal is a profound embrace that equips each mother and child to walk in complete independence afterward—helping them find housing, work, whatever is needed. Because to love and nurture is to understand that every ending carries within it the hope of a beginning, built with passion and intelligence. If a desperate, lonely pregnant woman has an endless hunger for tenderness, the real wager is to transform that hunger into strength—into a genuine comfort that lets her live her daily life on solid ground.
Word that a woman is in difficulty usually reaches Via degli Orti Spagnoli through a referral center, but it can also come from city offices, word of mouth, the parish, and elsewhere. This is the most difficult and painful part of the work: deciding who to welcome and who cannot be admitted. The evaluation considers not only the physical availability of beds, but also the woman's personal history and her circumstances, her age (residents average 27 years old, with the largest cluster between 21 and 24; the youngest was 15 years and 8 months, the oldest 45), and her origin. Most are foreign—African women, especially from Cape Verde; from Eastern Europe, primarily Polish; and from Central and South America. Others are Italian, mostly from Lazio, Campania, Puglia, and Calabria. Given these social and cultural characteristics, the staff must try to anticipate how a woman might adjust to living in a family home—a structure that, however welcoming and respectful of diversity, has its own rules and its fragile daily balance.
The house, which operates on public contributions and private donations, depends heavily on volunteers who take on different roles according to their gifts: handling bureaucracy, cooking, organizing outings, managing the clothing store, leading creative workshops, teaching Italian, and more. In doing so, they shape the home's communal spirit. Over the years, the house has welcomed 167 children (127 born on Via degli Orti Spagnoli); 119 were legally recognized by the mother alone, 48 by both parents. It truly aims to be a home where people live "as a family." This means, for instance, that the young women are free to ask to be accompanied to the delivery room—and equally free, if circumstances demand it, to choose adoption for their child. What matters most here is listening and patience. There are daily rules, yes, but the staff is also deeply attentive to each woman's religious practice, habits, and sensitivities. Time moves at the pace of a woman sewing baby clothes, or keeping an appointment with her doctor. It's the time of a new mother hunting for work compatible with her new life. It's the time when the house prepares for its summer retreat to a seaside cottage rented for August, when a birth is celebrated, or when the staff feels awkward trying to sell copies of the beautiful photo book that tells their story.
It is time around birth that often becomes something more. Via degli Orti Spagnoli is also a place women return to—for a snack, for conversation, for comfort and to offer comfort, to find a new shirt for their child or to leave one that no longer fits but will be perfect for another little girl taking her first yawns. Because, as Sister Giuliana likes to say, "between the life that is born and the life that dies flows the same mystery"—a mystery from which, perhaps, we can catch a spark in the faces of these women.
Giulia Galeotti, 2004