Last June, Pietro Vetro was elected president of Fede e Luce onlus. Having served in that role through two previous terms, Ombre e Luci asked me to interview him. What emerged was a conversation about his own journey, and that of Fede e Luce itself — about the future, openness to the wider world, responsibility, and the Church.
What are your goals for the next four years?
Certainly collecting the membership data — a persistent headache for every board before us — and registering with Runts, work already underway despite its own complications. I also want to secure funding to sustain all our initiatives. The grant-based fundraising we launched last term is something of a weak point that needs strengthening. And I want to deepen our ties with the Church, with L'Arca, with civil society institutions.
We share the desire to bring Fede e Luce outward, to engage with other movements and create new partnerships.
I'd like to embed ourselves in parish communities across Italy — really plant ourselves in local soil — so people know who we are and new communities can take root. Missionary zeal is woven into the movement's DNA. The association simply helps that along.
For some communities, the technical and bureaucratic questions feel removed from what draws people naturally to Fede e Luce. But that's not quite right: being an association is essential — it sustains the movement and lets Fede e Luce live. Do you have communication initiatives in mind?
Last year I served on the nominations committee for electing provincial coordinators, and we visited communities one by one. Beyond expanding traditional media — website, social platforms — we need personal contact. That's what Fede e Luce teaches us, and it's at the heart of our faith too. The idea would be to visit communities regularly, but we're only beginning. We'll see where we are in a couple of years.
That sounds excellent.
As long as the movement agrees. Certain decisions need to come from the movement itself, not from the association — we're just there to support. Take the pilgrimage: the association handles logistics, but how it unfolds, the timing, the approach — those have to come mainly from the thematic and logistical teams.
So you're giving me a preview — 2025 will be full of events: the Jubilee and the pilgrimage to Pompeii. Are you nervous?
As always. These are big commitments, and they cost. That's why I keep pushing — both the association and the movement — to chase funding at every level and through every channel.
What would you want pilgrims to hear?
We have everything in place for something beautiful. Clearly, we've talked about this many times — a pilgrimage has an element of sacrifice; people need to understand that. But it's also a chance to meet so many people, to live intensely together over several days. Sometimes fear of something becomes fear of being afraid. We have to dare a little. I have real confidence in this. The Jubilee itself is different — it's joining a celebration much larger than ourselves, shared with countless others. That's a stunning opportunity to show people who Fede e Luce is. I've spent years in parish life and other movements, but I still believe Fede e Luce is something absolutely unique. If we can present that — through mime, perhaps the most immediate language — and through personal encounters with other communities during the Jubilee, we'll seize an opportunity we can't afford to miss. It will be good for us and good for others.
Looking back on your own journey with Fede e Luce, I remember Assisi 2005: you'd been in community just five years when you agreed to help coordinate logistics for that gathering. What has Fede e Luce given you personally through these years of responsibility? What would you say to someone entering community for the first time, someone often frightened by the prospect of taking on responsibility?
Fede e Luce is always a place where you grow. Being president is teaching me concrete skills; the movement itself taught me how to relate to people different from me. My life has taken shapes I could only take because I was in Fede e Luce — like our decision to adopt. Finding myself suddenly interacting with two people who speak a different language, eat different food, have different habits. Fede e Luce teaches you how to hold all that. Years ago I quoted something Mariangela Mazzarotto Bertolini said to spiritual directors, but it speaks to everyone: "Fede e Luce keeps you from being ordinary." Fede e Luce lets you live a life that's always changing, always opening. I'm very glad my daughters are coming to Fede e Luce now, even though their own faith journeys are quite different. I tell young people: take this opportunity. It offers a way of living unlike what we're used to — sitting in a circle, learning to be with people unlike yourself, understanding that we're all equal but that doesn't mean we should all be stamped from the same mold. Difference makes everything richer, more interesting. Fede e Luce teaches you that.
I know spiritual assistants in communities mean a lot to you.
We know of people who've been sent away from Mass because their children made noise. Walk into any parish Mass today and you still don't see many people with disabilities. The spiritual assistant is the one who reconciles them with the Church and with faith. It's not simple work. Once a spiritual director told me he felt like an amateur floundering. In a parish structure, you arrive, say Mass, teach catechism, manage relationships between groups — and through those concrete tasks, you build bonds. At Fede e Luce there's nothing but relationship-building, so the work is harder, yet a present spiritual assistant makes all the difference. It matters enormously for the Church too, because it witnesses that there's another way to be with fragile people, a way unlike the usual approach.
The context around us has shifted — society, law, the Church itself — and our own history has been partly rewritten. What challenges do you see Fede e Luce facing in the coming years?
First, drawing in more young people. Second, learning to work with other movements and communities, both youth-focused and otherwise. When I first came, Fede e Luce seemed somewhat turned inward. But in recent years it's opened to the world, thanks partly to the association's work. It needs to keep doing that — so it can give everything it has to offer, genuinely and fully, to society and to the Church.
