For around 20 years I have worked in a shelter and community soup kitchen in the city of Rome. This service currently hosts 80 people from the ages of 18 to over 80, who face grave social and health emergencies. As a social worker, I handle their healthcare in detail.
Through this service, I live the charism of Mother Frances in my daily life. The life stories of the people I encounter are imbued with pain, loneliness, drugs, and violence, with little hope for a better future. Over the years, I have developed the conviction that the most effective way to express the charism is always to keep alive the hope that the difficulties they have experienced can also represent opportunities for liberation and concrete improvement. Besides professionalism, I consider transparency and honesty fundamental in my relationships with the people for whom I am working.
This attitude is not born of detachment and coldness, but for me it represents the realization of a Christian message: respect for the other and authenticity in giving of oneself. I do not behave as a friend to the guests but as a figure of reference while maintaining empathy and humanity.
Translating all of this into concrete actions is not simple. Recently, for example, I have experienced the difficulties of the young foreigners who find themselves living on the streets for different reasons, often related to bureaucracy. Their principal need is finding work to become legal in the Italian territory. They are 18 years old and at that age the weight of a job, in order to send money to their families after the laborious journey to reach Italy, renders them quite fragile. Some of them risk ending up in the clutches of mafia organizations, especially for drug dealing, while others have psychiatric problems due to the effects of posttraumatic stress.
Among these young people, I met O., a young, uneducated Egyptian man of 19 who cannot learn Italian. He misses his family, especially his mom. Even if he wanted to, he could not return to his homeland. After manifesting a tendency for self-harm due to labor exploitation, we recommended that he leave his job, though we worried that he would need to find another one immediately in order to have a residence permit. He accepted being looked after by a psychologist with difficulty. I can only speak to him through colleagues who speak Arabic, but our relationship manages to transcend words, and, when he sees me, he greets me with “Mama” and a hug. His eyes are smiling again, and I smile at him, entrusting him to Mother Frances.
Thanks to this experience, I can contemplate how strong God’s love is that passes through concrete gestures made of listening, welcome, and care. I carry in my heart the awareness that every wound, if accompanied with love and humanity, can slowly be transformed into opportunities for rebirth. It is in this journey of mutual care that I continue to recognize the most authentic value of service and hope.
SFP Associate Francesca Campeti
