The Gift and the City | Review

We know Giacomo Panizza well: a worker-priest born in 1947 who, at twenty-nine, left his native Lombardy for Calabria, that complicated land where poverty and organized crime coexist. There he founded and now leads Comunità Progetto Sud. Much of his work—finding concrete solutions for migrants, women fleeing violence, people with disabilities, and the vulnerable in every form—Panizza has shared both in speech and on the page. His latest book contains a genuine gem: "It becomes essential to reinterpret generosity and volunteer service through the lens of the ordinary, not as a 'special quality of special people' but as a 'normal quality of normal people.'" A few lines that capture a shift in thinking we desperately need.