"Can I have a glass of Schweppes?" Benoit asks politely, approaching the bar counter. Gerard, in a gray vest and glasses, pulls a bottle from the fridge as the radio plays softly in the background. Benoit settles at one of the small tables where Arturo, Cristiano, and others sit, nursing juice or coffee—never alcohol. A few words are exchanged. Smiles of friendship pass between them.
This is no ordinary bar. It's the café of the "Invitati alla Festa"—the Party's Guests—an experimental shelter in the heart of Besançon. Like Arturo and Benoit, Gerard carries a psychiatric disability. Years ago, a severe depression forced him to leave work. Now, every Tuesday afternoon, he pulls on a bartender's apron without hesitation. "It lets me meet other people," he says, smiling. "I feel less alone."
Walking into "Invitati alla Festa," you'd never guess what lies inside. The old church façade that faces the street near the Doubs river looks slightly weathered. But step through it, and a small world flourishes in peace, work, and celebration—a former Capuchin convent transformed into something alive.
Thirteen people live here permanently. Nearly eighty more come regularly to restore themselves through friendship and activity. Ceramics. Dance. Painting. English and computer classes. The house has a state-of-the-art room that all of Besançon envies. The "Used Goods Shop," stocked with hundreds of garments, opens the association to the neighborhood—because isolation serves no one. And at the heart of it all: a small chapel that holds regular prayers and moments of reflection. About forty volunteers complete this community, outwardly varied but built on a single cornerstone: welcoming the excluded.
When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and you will be blessed
(Lk. 14, 13).
The association's evangelical spirit comes from a psychiatrist in the city: Marie Noelle Mouchet-Besancon. Since finishing her studies, she has dreamed of a place where people with psychiatric illness—the depressed, the psychotic—could live. People who "die of loneliness" more than their sickness kills them. Fifteen years ago, the "Invitati alla Festa" numbered only thirty, gathering once a month for lunch and a walk. Then the pace quickened. Marie Noelle drew her husband into the venture. In 1998, they bought the convent.
It was an ideal space—cloisters, gardens—that allowed new activities and welcomed more guests. Marie Noelle and Jean live in a small apartment at the convent's heart, fully committed to "living with" their community. He, formerly an administrator, retrained and now gives all his free time to the association. She, though working part-time as a psychiatrist in her city office, refuses the label here: "These are not my patients," she reflects. "This is more like a big family." A family where each person finds his place and develops himself. "Living with them—it saves them, and it saves me." Despite suffering that sometimes remains terrible for some, shared life allows unexpected progress.
In the hallway between activities, we meet Filippo. At forty, he's an old-timer of the house, a man whose life has been remade. Since arriving, he has not returned to the psychiatric hospital. Recently, he was hired to work six hours a week—the limit his disability pension allows. Work has given his days meaning again. Like others here, he's been reintegrated into society, blurring the line between the sick and the well. It's better than nothing.
Who is who? Who welcomes and who is welcomed? A visitor tries at first to sort out who plays which role. Then you give up, and simply meet people—decisively beyond classification. Marie Noelle explains: "This is an ambiguous place, but it's a good ambiguity. We live on the margins, but inside life itself. And life goes where it will." Perhaps life will lead this founding couple to nurture similar projects across France.
At the bar, Cristiana takes over from Gerard and exchanges a smile with a friend at a nearby table. Suspended on a string above the room, a poster with an image and a poem catches your eye—perhaps offering the luminous answer to this house's mystery: "He had stayed in his corner—stayed in the dark—the invitations to the party had gone unheard—The blind man saw him—took his hand, and led him toward the songs of the feast".
Cyril Donille, 2004
(Ombres et Lumière, n. 145)