How Pope Francis' Visit Affected These Homeless Families Occupying A Church In Rome

[rug]

In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Sunday, Dec. 1, 2013, Pope Francis meets a group of representatives of the people who is fighting for housing in the Tor Sapienza area of Rome. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

Huffington Post Italy | By Giulia Belardelli
Posted: 01/26/2014 7:46 am EST | Updated: 01/27/2014 10:59 am EST

When it’s overcast in Tor Sapienza the sky looms ominously. It matches the large public housing projects, the sheds and the sketches of unfinished structures that translate into architecture the area’s sense of insecurity. We are in the eastern outskirts of Rome, just a few steps away from the Grande Raccordo Anulare (Great Ring Junction), in one of the capital’s roughest neighborhoods. The San Cirillo Alessandrino parish church contrasts with the rest: its new seat was inaugurated a year and a half ago, and its colors are still vivid, the garden is well looked after, and there are flower pots on the windowsills. Not far from there, 15 Italian families live in the deconsecrated church where the parish was previously located -- they occupied the building in October after losing their jobs and their homes. It is here that Pope Francis began the Advent. And it is here, with the holidays coming to an end, that we are returning to see what has changed.

“That visit turned on the lights, it generated sparks”, Don Marco Ridolfo, the parish priest at San Cirillo, tells us. He isn’t even forty, and he has a kind smile and bright eyes. “I can’t go into personal details, but what I can say is that, aside from the excitement of the moment, there have been changes in peoples’ intimate life, intentions become facts, the facts of life. Some people have rid themselves of their shame or resignation, and after many years returned to the confessional. Some have just asked to chat with me informally, walking around the parish. And some managed after many years to simply ask for help.”

Recalling the preparations still puts Don Marco in a cold sweat. “From the start we considered Pope Francis’ visit to be a gift. Because of shyness and discretion we hadn’t extended an invitation to him, so it came all of a sudden, as a surprise”. A big responsibility for Don Marco and his co-pilot Don Daniel, a 28 year old Maltese priest. “Everybody came together around us to help out. In the period leading up to the visit, and even after, many started seeing the parish as their home, and as such they took care of it. People came to clean, to decorate, to bring flowers, the way you do when you are expecting a welcome guest in your house”. Without altering the realities of the neighborhood, Don Marco specifies. “Pope Francis wanted to learn about our situation here, to get to know it, and that is what we showed him”.

“This is a tough area, yes, but it is also sincere”, he adds. “There aren’t a lot of superstructures, it’s one of those neighborhoods that is what it looks like. If somebody wants to tell you to go to hell, they’ll do it openly, but if somebody loves you, they will tell you in a thousand ways”. It’s with this kind of directness that a group of destitute families have made their home in the abandoned church, with the encouragement of the Metropolitan Housing Resistance group, an organization that has been fighting for the right to housing in Rome for a couple of years now. Pope Francis met with them as well, continuing a dialogue that had already started with the parish.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/26/pope-francis-homeless-families-_n_4660698.html?ref=topbar

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. It is good, every so often, to remember that the Pope is Bishop of Rome

And here he is, acting in that role. Would that other bishops do the same.