Testimony – Lillina Atanasio ASC

When I was still a young girl, not yet 18 years old, I received the certificate of membership as a Salesian Cooperator directly from Fr Ricceri, and always anxiously awaited the Rector Major's Strenna because for me it meant then, as it does still today, my project to take up for the coming year.

It was a time for waiting for the Strenna like I have waited for this one this year. Therefore I heartily thank the Rector Major who has had the sensitivity and the courage to launch a very real and even disturbing reflection for us Salesians today.

The words of this Strenna took me back to the 80's when, just recently returned from Ecuador after an experience in the forests of the Amazon as a lay missionary, full of teachings about life learned from the Kivaros, I decided, with my husband, to dedicate my life, indeed, we decided to dedicate our lives, to the missions.

Our return to the Amazon was prevented, firstly, by the arrival of our first child, Giampiero, and then by reasons of health.

It seemed that everything was ganging up against our choice; only later did I understand that, perhaps, the good Lord had other ideas in mind for us and our lives.

I recall those years (from '78 to '80) as being somewhat bleak though brightened up by our child's smile. With his birth our marriage was enriched: we seemed to be caught up in the humdrum of activities (work-home, home-work) that kept our dreams well tied down, dreams that were fundamental choices on which our love had been based… while around us a world was crying out: help, a world, especially of young people, besieged by enormous dangers, dangers too great to leave us in peace, anchored in a system of life that saw us almost exclusively committed to our child and our life as a couple.

These were years when many, too many young people succumbed to the burden of heroin, and many, too many went in and out of prison, abandoned by their families with very few people interetsed in their stories.

The words Don Bosco uttered after visiting the Turin prison and seeing so many young men behind bars, came to me insistently : “ Ah! If only these young people had a friendly hand…” I felt a duty and a desire in me to become a friendly hand to prevent the destruction of so many wonderful young people: and that's how we ended up searching for somewhere to take in young people who challenged our conscience and set us up for a rather “sui generis” kind of lifestyle, certainly far from the world that maybe our parents had dreamt for us.

Who knows how, but everything began from lucky coincidences: the Rector of the Shrine of Divine Love, to whom we had turned, pointed out a run-down, abandoned structure, a stable basically with some of the stalls still intact, belonging to the Marquis Gerini, noted friend and benefactor of Salesian work. It did not take much to convince us to put it at the disposition of young people in difficulties. Perhaps neither he nor we imagined at the time that this “ stable” would give warmth to more than 400 young people over the course of these (25) years, where they found a hand extended to help them in their needs.

It is not the first time a 'stable', an anonymous kind of place and certainly rejected by the well-to-do, has been the cradle of dreams of someone who loves to proclaim a renewed life for the poor, the oppressed the least.

With help from many Cooperators, Salesians, Sisters,… the stable was soon transformed into a welcoming home for young people who were asking for help.

This way our family grew, opening its doors to minors, adolescents, who found themselves in difficult social, family, personal circumstances.

Following a long-held Salesian tradition we started out without finances, trusting ourselves exclusively to offerings from many friends but especially relying on God's help, and so the good God would not forget us we called the work “Providence”

We did not want the work to be therapeutic or a quasi-boarding house, but right from the start a “Family” open to young people who found themselves in difficulty at home or elsewhere or because they had broken the law or were in danger of re-offending etc. and were looking for moral, educational support for the time needed to develop a better situation, which would help them go back to their family and re-enter society. We favoured prevention with regard to mistakes or re-offending, in the style taught us by Don Bosco.

It is not a simple task to cover all the activities over a period of 25 years. Only the Lord, in fact, knows the human heart; only he understands the effort that our labours brought or will bring. We try to give Christian witness, and all thanks to Him if it should bear fruit.

The first few years saw us tied up mainly with minors entrusted to us by the Juvenile courts in virtue of Law 266 which said that a minor on first offence will not be put in prison, to avoid the youngster picking up deviant attitudes.

When this law came into force it meant quite an important social and cultural turnaround. For the first time the minor was seen as a person with rights and, as such, rights to be safeguarded and sustained.

Society always has a duty to young people, and is obliged to offer the best to provide them with the capacity to live a worthy life now and prepare for a free and responsible future, and when the courts entrusted us with disturbed youngsters we were implicitly being asked to be guarantors of a qualified educational offering which could not but be marked by the style of Don Bosco's pedagogy.

Providence immediately became a rare and privileged place where an adolescent in difficulties eventually becomes a natural and spontaneous centre of attention, in the shape of a family lifestyle, full of stimuli and offering many opportunities to reflect freely and trustingly on problems of uncertain identity marked by conflict with society.

The young person who comes to this family setting quickly notices the special atmosphere there: tensions, fears, refusals carried within are refashioned in the new situation they find themselves in. The minor now discovers a contact with adults who are no longer hostile and authoritarian, but with whom it is possible to build positive relationships around understanding, cooperation, friendship in mutual respect. All this however presumes a minimum of preparation and involvement on the part of the minor in this new experience, otherwise everything becomes more difficult.

When the relationship between the minor and the family home is positive one becomes aware, and experience confirms this, that the wall of diffidence towards adults is broached, a wall the adolescent builds as defence in previous family and social difficulties. Nostalgia for earlier affections begins to come alive, especially for maternal affection, now experienced as a desire for protection from the traumatic factors that created such serious problems when a child. The young person makes strides in awareness of having his or her own inner strengths, that can be directed towards aims which are maybe not yet well defined, but which the young person now knows can be striven for with the help of an adult who is a real friend.

This way the young person is able to take up his or her life again, and rethink all the difficulties (school, affective, expressive,lack of skills, work problems etc.) and create, in what by now is just a brief time,the circumstances for his or her own future in a relationship with society that is no longer one of being marginalised.

Our job, as you can see, is a tough one, but there is a result: those who have spent some time with us, Italians or foreigners,have all experienced their time not as a misadventure to be added to the others, but as an important and enriching time which, however, is an expression of a culture of solidarity: This culture of solidarity has always been one of our declared convictions, with its roots to be found not only in a religious and Salesian faith but also in an alternative and more human conception of society. What we want to offer is a space for “justice”, in the sense that we propose to offer the minor what he or she has never had or has had in inadequate measure.

We have sincerely never theorised about our approach with young people, because the Salesian style, Don Bosco's style, is already itself a successful model:it excludes all kinds of paternalism or handout mentality in order to offer a sincere proposal of acceptance, backed up by friendship, a listening ear, sharing, a demanding but just coherence in behaviour.
To accept and be accepted thus becomes a key point and, as such, the chief objective of our family home. If we don't succeed in involving the minor in decisions around and about him or her, no educational project can be set in motion and we are limited to tasks of repression or guarding over which is far from the thinking of Don Bosco.

Recent years have seen us involved exclusively in taking in foreign minors from North Africa, Albania, Romania and Afghanistan. This last group, in particular, bring us to recall how Don Bosco loved young people: “it is enough that you are young for me to love you very much”. These are youngsters who have fled war, have had to leave their country to escape the fate of their parents who died at the hands of the Taliban. They have very sad stories, in their eyes you see the terror of death, and in their hearts the awareness that they cannot return home. Far from their own roots, without being able to plant new ones, suspended between the past and the future, in a present which is poor, deprived, many carry on their bodies the evident marks of tortures suffered before they could escape. The story of their wanderings cannot but move us to be a friendly hand for them, a shoulder to lean on and, why not, to cry on when they remember their loved ones and their far off country. They are strong kids, to put it in a nutshell: I don't know how many of our Italian youngsters more or less accustomed to comfort would have the inner strength these ones show. Alone, foreigners in a strange land which is often hostile and diffident towards them, they know how to roll up their sleeves, evident in their efforts to learn our language, our customs, our peaceful lifestyle, without too many obstacles or problems. Our task as a couple and as Salesian Cooperators for these young people is what the Rector Major has stressed in his Strenna : educate with the heart of Don Bosco for the total development of young lives, especially the poorest and the most disadvantaged, by promoting their rights.

Certainly we try to educate and love with the heart of Don Bosco, but we will never have a heart quite like his … certainly we understand and act so that our young friends will be respected in their rights. Perhaps only today do I understand the great difficulty experienced by Don Bosco when he went around the workplaces looking for boys to encourage them, but especially to ensure that those who gave them work would respect their rights. We have found that often we have had to take action to re-insert the boys in the world of work which is ever more restrictive but especially so that those offering them work will do so in a just and correct way .. How many times we've had to remind people about respecting proper working hours and proper remuneration…and at the same time have had to say sorry for the exploitation of so many good Christians da parte di tanti buoni cristiani . Our task becomes concrete, then, promoting in a factual way and as much as possible the dignity of these young people. It is not enough to simply open wide our hearts to receive them: today more than ever we have to go into bat for them so their rights will be respected, so that none of them will lack hope for a more human future. I think if Don Bosco were alive today, he would certainly give vent to his creativity to nurture a culture of formation of consciences for recognising the fundamental rights of the human person whatever colour of skin and to respond conretely to Christ's cry for help in the guise of a thirsty Angolan, or an afghan orphan who has seen his dear ones die with his own eyes, or a lad who has fled an unconsciable situation in his own country…

There are so many memories impressed on my mind and in my heart by these youngsters, if I had to tell the story of all those who have passed through our home there wouldn't be sufficient years of my life left to tell them.. But I want to leave you with one:

“It was Christmas eve 24 years ago. I was at the stove getting supper ready, when a boy came to tell me that Merak ( a Gypsy boy who had recently come to Providence) was sobbing his heart out. Merak had been sold to a caravan of Gypsies by his parents when he was but two years of age. Forced to beg , bashed and tortured (on his back were the marks where he had been burned by cigarettes) when he was ten he managed to escape and hide his whereabouts ; he was found by police half frozen to death under a park bench in Eur, and the only words he knew in Italian were: some coins, a hundred lire please. He was put into an institute to await adoption but .. who would have the courage to adopt a boy who wasn't blond, didn't have blue eyes and what's worse, was a Gypsy? The institute where he was was closing down and they had to find a place for the smallest ones: He was 14 when he came to us after an article in The Messaggero had discovered the existence of Providence. He was working in a pizzeria near the institute where he was staying.The proprietor hadp't taken him on full time, indeed he found it a problem just giving him work. Merak , that day , had seen all the comings and goings at Providence from friends coming to give us Christmas greetingi : it brought him to a crisis.
I got him to talk and tell me why he was crying. It was a long time before he answered me: I am crying because I was thinking about my situation; I am alone in the world, I don't know my parents, I have no relatives, no friends… if I had to give Christmas greetings to someone I wouldn't know who to go and give them to.”
His answer might sound somewhat banal because there were plenty of others in the house in a similar situation. but Merak had such a sad, almost desperate look. Who knows what he might have been thinking!! I embraced him saying that what he was saying wasn't quite true because from that moment he could and should be giving us Christmas greetings, Carlo and Lillina, as well as all the friends he had at Providence. .
He calmed down and immediately gave me one of his most beautiful smiles. I went back to the stove. After a good half hour he came and found me in the kitchen; he asked me to go to the room nearby and I went; in the centre of the table there was a pretty Christmas star all on show , and a little note with the hurriedly written words : “dear mum, I love you so much!”

It was the first of a long series because from that day on every year Merak, no longer a boy, had friends to say 'Happy Christmas' to!

Let me conclude here with the wish that everyone present and all the Salesian Family can give a hand in life to and welcome with open arms the 'Happy Christmas' and sincere smile of so many Meraks running around our streets and waiting for someone to say: “From today on you are no longer alone. I am here”.