The real “blessing”, For Innocenzo and Carlois “to be recognized as a family within our community”. Together for 19 years and civilly united by three, both come from a path of personal and familiar faith that has pushed them over time and with loyalty to seek their place inside the Church. Galeotto was the meeting in Kairos, a group of Christians LGBTQ+ of Florence of which Innocenzo is still one of the coordinators, in 2005, “years in which for homosexuals there was no place to pray. He joined us, “says Carlo,” that Innocenzo had a cloistered nun as a spiritual mother and I was very fond of the Clarisse. In that place, in the meetings that the group organized, the decisive aspects of our life merged. Homo officance and love for God».
After years of frequentation and after having presented themselves respectively to the families of origin, “we feel lucky because, even with all the effort of the case, we have been welcomed and never judged”, even if Carlo’s parents, must be said, were in difficulty, they joined civilly in August 2020: “A commitment of loyalty and love in front of the people who love us, but also the opportunity to take away from the embarrassment of saying who we were saying to each other”. Innocenzo works in an RSA; Carlo, after a religious past, is alert in Florence. “For the occasion we have created a site in which to tell about us and share with the others who we are and what we want. To make the people of our promise of life good setting participateAnd”.
A seriousness also appreciated in the parish where they live, in Campi Bisenzio, at the gates of Florence, where they are involved “in the choir, in the catechesis for adults and”, specifies the parish priest, Don Bledar Xhuli«In the Families Group. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even be the title to participate. ” A family, theirs, without children: “We chose not to have it. Our paternity is expressed towards those who welcome in Kairos and in having created the experience of Gionata.org, a portal born in 2007 to reach anyone who lives this condition and why nobody feels alone ».
That same loneliness and that deep loss that the parents of joy experienced when his daughter confessed to him that he was homosexual. That day Maria and Paolo Aminti They remember him well, she sitting on the sofa in the room, the tears that flowed on the face for the effort and pain of what her heart lived. “He had fallen in love with another woman. There he was as if the weather had stopped, it was an unexpected and shocking event. In the evening it was impossible to sleep. We wondered what we were wrong. ” All the more reason because for thirty years they have been involved in the parish and diocesan pastoral care. “Our daughter was part of that world that we could not even pronounce the name, LGBT, a theme who called something esoteric, disgusting, reprehensible. That night, “adds Maria,” the phrase of the Bible “you are precious in my eyes came to the rescue and I love you”. If he was saying it to me, he also said it in Gioia. I took nine months to “re-parry” my daughter as it is and not as I imagined it. Then the immense pain has ceased».
Today Paolo and Maria await, with serenity, the civil union in June of joy and partner and from February, ins together with Don Andrea Bigalli, Sister Fabrizia Giacobbe and Don Giovanni Martinithey will be part of the coordination for the pastoral care of the inclusion desired by the Archbishop of Florence, Giuseppe Betori. “The Lord changed our hearts and eyes. We had to cross a path of exodus, leaving lands known for distant lands that showed us a reality very different from what we had imagined, in which allegiance, responsibility and care also live. In this, Sister Fabrizia, a welcoming face of the Church, helped us who, having accompanied many parents and many people over the years, cried with us and put us in touch with the “3 -infected parents” network “.
Their commitment now also leads them to meet the Tuscan bishops to talk about these themes. “Starting from people and not from their classification; By eliminating simplified messages that do not do justice to the truth of the Word of God, a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible can be dispelled that creates a barbed wire, clubs on the head of homosexual people. Their orientation is not a choice or a vice and often they are people animated by great faithfully tested faith. The pastoral that was born in Florence is the sign of a listening church, the result of the synodal path. The Pope illuminates this path: to a mother like us already in 2020 he said: “God loves your children as they are and also loves them” “. Second in Italy after Turin, the new pastoral care is part of the pastoral care for the family: “In the sign of a church that dialogues and builds new answers together,” he says Don Andrea Bigalli. «Inside the family because it is the fundamental perspective of existence. A divisive theme addressed in the horizon of Mercy, the attitude with which each of us stands in front of God because no one is without sin and we must all continually convert to the love of Christ “.
And the condemnations of the Bible? «The biblical data is the reality on which the Vatican Council II operated the most radical revolutions. They are texts born in certain historical contexts that must be reread from a different perspective or, still today, we should teach adulterers, make sacrifices on the altars. Instead we can and must evolve, the biblical interpretation itself grows and improves with the succession of generations. The Gospels direct the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, the novelty of Jesus pushes to reread the Bible with new tools in the perspective of God’s benevolence». Sister Fabrizia Giacobbetogether with his community of Dominican nuns, he was a pioneer in reception: «For all of us, the meeting with homo -affective people, often looked at with suspicion or embarrassment, It was a source of great joy and built us for the profound faith they showedfor the authenticity of their journey always in search of the will of God on one’s life. We also built the parents who could become a model for our Christian communities and the whole Church; I saw their bewilderment in front of the coming out of the children but, over time, also the ability to undertake a path capable of freeing from prejudices and rigidity for love. And this is what I also wish to the Church: a path in which to show more and more a face of mother, an expression of a heart just close to everyone ».
On the cover, a photo of the last hearing of the Gionata tent with Pope Franceso.
