Gold prospectors—that's what I'd call the guiding theme of this book. For Gino Rigoldi, everyone, especially Christians, should be prospectors for gold, where gold is the fingerprint of God, the good and precious part present in every person, man or woman, young or old. Naive idealism? Perhaps. But also a challenge—not merely of faith, but profoundly human—that demands we look past the sometimes disagreeable surface of people to discover the intelligence, affection, and emotion beneath. From the opening pages, it becomes clear we are reading the work of an extraordinary man, someone who speaks of certain values not as abstract principles or rhetorical flourishes but as convictions he has lived with deep conviction. Don Gino recounts his first encounter with young people when he accepted, with some resignation, the position of vice-rector at the "De Filippi" College in Varese—a temporary setback, as it were, after being deemed lacking in "ecclesiastical spirit" as a priest. Those were the words used by the rector of Venegòno seminary.
There he found himself confronted with the needs of many young people. The choice was simple: swim or drown. Swimming meant listening, engaging in dialogue, building the kind of trust that serves education. This experience taught him to read the Gospel through the lens of what boys needed—many from families who had migrated from the South. It was about recovering the keys to understanding what it meant for me to be a priest, keys I had not found in seminary, in regulations, or in ecclesiastical practices, but which became clear when a boy in the college was struggling. It was as if a simplification had occurred, reordering my scale of values, the things I believed a priest should do, placing persons and their needs first.
His faithful reading of the Gospel, paradoxically, did not make life easier when he became a parish priest, precisely because of his desire to know and engage with people: I never thought of preaching the Gospel to the "faithful," understood as users of a public service. These were the early seventies. Young people arrived with requests that had nothing to do with religion; the parish filled with long beards and denim jackets, and this caused considerable anxiety in the pastor. He was searching for a new pastoral practice to counter the rigid traditionalism of the old schemas—catechism classes and collective prayers. I never believed that Jesus Christ came into the world to found a Church designed for priests, with their liturgical rules, hierarchies, and traditions. I always believed that our first obedience had to be to the Gospel.
He accepted with joy his assignment to the Beccaria juvenile prison in Milan, where he applied this vision, arguing that an educational system grounded in healthy, honest, and constructively challenging relationships is the best "discipline" for young people. From this work emerges a careful analysis of the problems of adolescence. In the book he engages directly with the key figures in a young person's life: parents, teachers, professional educators, priests, and coaches. It is necessary, he argues, to establish a contract with the adolescent founded on non-negotiable values: responsibility, justice, solidarity. Young people may not seem to hold these concepts in high regard, yet even during serious conflicts they do not abandon their respect for the adult who has taught and lived by these ideals. It is clear, then, that such teachings cannot be merely theoretical; they require the example of an educator who has lived them firsthand.
Laura Nardini, 2007
