«When we met Bishop Franco Alfano on September 8, 2024, along with people invited by the Health Pastoral Office of the Diocese of Castellammare-Sorrento, we explained what Faith and Light is and let the parents, mothers, and young people there experience a typical day in one of our gatherings. Afterward we went to lunch with Caritas, eating alongside all the other poor. Without knowing it, I found families I follow as a pediatrician—families I didn't know were living in such hardship. That's when I got yet another confirmation of something I'm coming to understand more deeply: the community has made me pay attention, like a lighthouse, to other situations around me, and that has challenged me profoundly».
Antonio Piscitelli is vice coordinator of the five Faith and Light communities in Campania. His work with people with disabilities began roughly thirty years ago, when he did his civilian service in Acerra and collaborated with the Sisters of Nazareth in welcoming at-risk minors and young people with disabilities.
Within those walls, a Faith and Light community had come to life about a decade earlier, founded by Sister Mariella and Sister Ada. It was an experiment that bore fruit and continues to operate today—not only within the community itself but also through the cooperative L'Arcobaleno—even after the sisters moved on.
After thirty years of friendships and bonds that keep unexpected promises, where does this «deepening awareness» you speak of begin?
I'd asked for a training day for the Campania communities because I thought we needed to pause and take stock of where we stood: the youngest is twenty years old, the oldest is forty. With help from friends who came from Puglia—the Guerra family—we read together the Charter and Constitution of Faith and Light, voiced our questions about it, and explored how its principles resonate not just within our community but in our daily lives and how they've shaped us. We then turned inward using a methodology—photo language—that benefits each person and strengthens the community, our friends, the young people, the parents.
What kind of «benefit» emerges?
A friend in his seventies who has been coming to Faith and Light for over twenty-five years spoke about a photograph he was holding: «I come from a family where my father was very strict, he rarely smiled, devoted himself to work,» he said. «What did I learn at Faith and Light? I learned to hold hands». This elderly friend found peace in something that sounds simple. He kept saying, «For me, it's enough to hold someone's hands, and I feel that emptiness I've carried since childhood begin to fill». That's when I truly grasped the meaning of community as a place of reconciliation—first and foremost with yourself.
A circle that can expand beyond that?
There was another father, fifteen years in the community, with a son who has autism. Until that day I had never heard him speak: «When the boys like my son are still children, you don't notice the difference between them and other kids. But when they get to middle school, high school, their classmates pull away. And as a father, you become your son's brother, his friend. Faith and Light's presence all these years has given me the sense that my son is not alone, that my son has friends». Then it's true that this community heals you in some way.
Does hope take concrete form?
We often say these things, we read them, and then years pass before someone tells you plainly that they've found something real: «It's these young people who give me so much. When I hold the hands of these young people, I remember how much I missed my own father». When I first thought about organizing the training, I imagined it would be a moment to take stock of what to do, where to go, who we want to be. Then people show up—people like these—who bring you back to the heart of why you're in a Faith and Light community. It's not just about adopting a Charter and Constitution: it means being part of something that heals or fills some of your own fragility. This was even more powerful because two men said it—men who rarely speak, whose experiences I didn't know.
Does belonging to a community that welcomes you change how you see things?
During a camp last summer, mothers of various children, including two boys with autism, shared with us memories of when they went—at different times and places, to a beach resort: «There was emptiness around us. People stared at us strangely». They told how their other children had found that experience painful. The next day, at camp, we went to the beach and received an extraordinary welcome from everyone, no sign of rejection.
From an elderly friend I grasped the true meaning of community as a place of reconciliation. First and foremost with yourself
That evening we gathered in a circle again: it was beautiful to let these parents leave with a different sense of what it might mean to spend a day at the beach. They had always refused to come with us, convinced their children might «cause trouble». The community allowed these mothers to see the world through new eyes. Sometimes community serves to give you a different perspective on what surrounds you.At our last national assembly we had the joy of meeting those young families from Castellammare, the seed of community called La Piccola Chiave.
They are an enthusiastic and active group of families who were waiting for a path like ours. For many years we hadn't gathered with more than a hundred people for the September grape harvest celebration. Truly, as our chosen theme said, we were «Drunk with Joy». The priest and some sisters who hosted us thanked us with tears for the Mass we led and asked us to come back and celebrate with them. We felt that joy again in December at Disability Day with Don Mimmo Battaglia in the cathedral in Naples. It was the Sunday of Christ the King, and the Gospel—with an almost apocalyptic theme—had been entrusted to us to proclaim. We prepared it by working with the symbolism of a black cloth that the bishop then took up in his homily: «Fear is like that cloth, often keeping us from seeing beyond. In a world of wars and divisions, social injustice, you are witnesses to the good news, you are light». How could we not share this joy? Now we're expected in Caserta. OL