What we all need is friendship. To live with friends, with people who are glad to share some time with us. This is why the pedagogy of the Arca comes down to telling each other, again and again: "I'm happy to live with you!" That's all there is to it—though it doesn't mean it's easy or that problems don't arise. If someone comes to the Arca with a sense of superiority, wanting to do good, they will surely treat the other person, the disabled person, as inferior. Instead, we must learn, slowly and together, to love. Love is not the same as doing good. Love means revealing something to the other person: "You matter. You are beautiful. You are precious. You have something to give to the world, to our community, to our friendship".
("Who Answers the Cry?" Jean Vanier, ed. La cittadella, 2015)
I cannot read these words without seeing them alive in Stefano di Franco: he embodied them through his work with Fede e Luce and in his life itself.
When we learned of his death—not sudden, anything but that—we decided to tell Pietro in person. We couldn't bear the thought of sharing such news about a beloved friend except face-to-face, each of us putting our hearts in the other's hands. And especially to Pietro, one of the people Stefano held most dear over these years. If you haven't seen them together, you can grasp the depth of their friendship by rereading the piece Stefano wrote from Pietro's perspective—words written with a clarity and power that Pietro himself, because of his disability, could never have achieved. Stefano gave his friend a voice. He opened a window onto the life of someone truly at the margins, in a struggling neighborhood on Rome's outskirts.
And just as he did with Pietro, Stefano wove bonds of the heart with many others—with and without disabilities, young and old, parents and children—in his Fede e Luce community, at the Arca, and I believe in his work too, with no distinctions at all. He always recognized the precious gift in every encounter, in every moment that reveals another's beauty. He offered each person the possibility of a meeting heart to heart, putting himself fully at stake despite—or perhaps because of—his inevitable flaws. As Jean Vanier suggests, "true communion happens in weakness. Only by gradually entering into the reality of our own weakness can we open ourselves to communion: 'I need you.' Not because you pity me, but because through our friendship, you show me that I am a unique and precious person."
The pieces collected in the section of our magazine dedicated to his memory bring out this talent of his. We hope to gather more contributions into a dedicated publication. Perhaps you have a memory of Stefano you'd like to share. Please do—write to us at ombreeluci@fedeeluce.it.
It's a legacy we truly hope to multiply.
Cristina Tersigni
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