Sunday afternoon, 4 p.m.: a group of friends from the Community of Sant'Egidio gathers in Trastevere in the small piazza that bears their name, where their historic headquarters now stands. They are young and not-so-young. Many of them have disabilities.
They are organizing a Sunday outing. They pile into several cars and set off: not to the cinema, not for a walk, not on a picnic. Their destination is closer than that. They are heading to the Cottolengo on via di Villa Alberici, where nuns care for elderly women—often very old, often alone in the world, forgotten by relatives or living far from their families. For fifteen years now, these young people have been alternating with a group from Garbatella in the same Community, spending their Sunday afternoons with these older friends. In the common room they talk, make music, sing, sometimes dance. Any initial wariness or hesitation from the residents has long since melted away. As Antonella says, "They wait for us as if we were their own family."
They arrive as a group, but then something organic happens: each young person naturally gravitates toward the older woman she feels closest to. They sit beside her, chat, laugh, or sometimes just sit together in comfortable silence—knowing they are good company to her, a real comfort.
At Christmas there is a celebration, and each young person brings a gift for her Sunday friend. We're told it's the young people with disabilities in the group who push the others to keep making these visits when fatigue sets in. What happens is that the women at the Cottolengo become a little more peaceful because of this bond of affection and friendship, strengthened now by fifteen years of faithfulness. What happens is that all the young people in the group, without exception, grow a little richer inside, a little more mature, a little more genuinely FRIENDS.
— Tea Cabras, 2001