The orchestra Chiave di Volta chose perhaps the rainiest day of the year for its concert in Rome's communities. The orchestra had won regional funding to play in places where music rarely reaches: hospitals, group homes, prisons. The young conductor had gone to school with a friend from one of the communities, and that connection led to this concert for Fede e Luce—a chance to make the movement known to a wider audience.
But this was no ordinary rainy day. The water fell from the sky in sheets, flooding streets and basements, soaking everything even under an umbrella. We had to drive across the city to San Gaetano, where the pastor has always welcomed us with open arms, and unload wheelchairs and elderly people into the downpour. Yet people came. Slowly the church filled for an event so unusual for the movement: a classical music concert. The orchestra consisted of string players—young musicians, a very young conductor of just twenty-one. The program: Mozart, Mendelssohn, Respighi. An hour of music.
It began with a video about Fede e Luce, its history and how it works. Images of celebrations and gatherings appeared on screen—shared joy, singing, dancing. Then Giorgia Fontani, sister of Corrado (who left us a few years ago, to everyone's great sorrow), spoke about joining the community at thirteen, when she came with her family. She described the amazement and wonder she felt seeing so many friends—just a few years older than her—spend Sundays with her brother and the other young people, and the welcome she and her family received.
Listening to her, I felt torn between two things. Giorgia's testimony, grounded in lived experience, moved me deeply. But it also stirred and intensified difficult questions about the path Fede e Luce walks, about the moment we're in now. Where are those young people Giorgia remembers from the community she entered at thirteen? We look at each other and see ourselves aged—the friends, the young people. Do our gatherings still matter, or have the changes in life and social consciousness made them obsolete? And the troubling reports about one of the founders—the most charismatic figure in the movement—don't those push doubt even further?
Giorgia finished speaking. Silence fell as the concert began. I closed my eyes, still caught in these thoughts.
When the orchestra began to play, beauty came toward me in waves, left me stunned. The emotion grew stronger, because the music communicated something like inner knowledge: this beautiful sound, filling the church before our communities, was given to us tonight as a revelation and sign of the beauty of the relationships realized in these communities—when the crushing weight of suffering is transformed into the reason for unity and mutual care.
The welcome that arises is clothed, however humbly and hidden even from our own eyes, in that same transfiguring beauty of God, which the music expresses in the church with such force and on behalf of all. This listening leaves me as if struck by the power and form this sort of revelation takes.
The concert unfolded in its different movements. We sat in silence, listening—except for the applause, which came long and thunderous. Despite the forced stillness, faces were relaxed and happy when it ended. People wanted to talk now, and lingered to greet and congratulate the conductor and musicians. The church filled with chatter, the sacristy cluttered with instruments. The pastor, rightly, grew exasperated: evening Mass was about to begin.