Mariangela looked radiant in her blue suit that Thursday, March 7th, when I greeted her as she entered the museum hall—just moments before she would receive the 2002 Woman of the Year award.
Created and promoted annually by the National Association of War Veterans and Prisoners (ANRP), the prize honors women who stood with courage, solidarity, and generosity beside soldiers and their families. It recognizes three Italian women devoted to upholding human life and dignity, acknowledging the concrete value of their service to others. Beyond the symbolic weight of the recognition itself, a monetary award is given—though not to the recipients themselves. Instead, the prize money funds the work of the three honorees, supporting humanitarian organizations that serve children and women in war-torn regions. This year, the funds will aid HAWCA, which works with Afghan children, allowing twenty girls to attend school for a full year.
The award works through others—through the daily gestures of its recipients. Mariangela and her thirty years with Faith and Light become a conduit between young Italians seeking to live with joy, awareness, and faith, and twenty Afghan girls laboring each day to learn. Mariangela carrying those thirty years so gracefully, with that sparkling light in her eyes that catches everyone who listens to her.
I met her and that smile of hers last year as our train glided toward Lourdes. The enthusiasm in her words—mirrored so perfectly in Pablo's gaze—was the same fervent joy that broke through, barely contained, during the award ceremony. She grew emotional, simply and without restraint. I wasn't quite sure what to do as she wept and laughed and apologized for those pauses. I saw many faces shimmer into view: young people, friends, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters—faces I knew and faces I'd never seen—all of them smiling and suffering, singing and crying out, resting, playing, eating and moving about; light and darkness, everything—perhaps with a bit of fear, but with courage. I stood there moved and smiling, surrounded by dark jackets and ties.
More than a bridge, Mariangela reminds me of a Roman aqueduct—solid, necessary, a monument without pretending to be one.
The recipients as bridges between here and there, between our country's concerns and distant places in need of care and attention—this is what was said and repeated. Yet to me, Mariangela is more like a Roman aqueduct than a bridge: solid, necessary, a monument without pretending to be one. Looking at its remnants scattered across the countryside, you wonder how such a thing could have been built two thousand years ago. So this prize goes to Mariangela Bertolini. For her, truly. We could use any metaphor we like, but the meaning is more beautiful still. Water travels from where it is gathered to where it is needed. Without someone to carry it, it simply wouldn't arrive. Without it, those who thirst couldn't drink and find relief. Mariangela as that conduit. It is her hands that have moved, her smile that has warmed so many lives, her energy and her tears that have built. A fine aqueduct, then—a fine bridge—but without it, we would never have made it this far.
This, I believe, is what was honored. "Those whom the world—in its judgment—often considers worthless, despises, deems useless or cursed will be our guides, because the gospel tells us that theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I don't fully understand how, but I trust this woman who does. Her hands. Her smile.
- Giulia Galeotti, 2002
Below is the note Mariangela wrote to thank those who supported her after the award ceremony. ===FINE===