From the post-war period to today in Italy approximately one million children have been abandoned by their parents and entrusted to children’s homes and orphanages. A phenomenon that for various reasons decreased over time, until this type of reception facilities were closed at the end of the 1990s. Like the provincial institute for children of Bari.
The director Alessandro Piva wanted to reconstruct its history together with that of some of those children who went up for adoptionin a documentary titled Cradle brothers.
From the post-war period to the end of the nineties, the former orphanage in Bari welcomed thousands of children (up to three years of age). The documentary gives voice to who took care of them and to men and women who spent the first months of their lives there. Stories often incredible, dramatic but also full of hope, with that emptiness in my heart to live with if you are aware that you have never known neither the name nor the face of those who brought us into the world.
Stories like that of Maria Patrunoadopted at seven months old by an elderly couple. «When I was about six years old», she remembers, «the children in the courtyard told me to make fun of me that I had been in prison. I didn’t understand that sentence and asked my mother. At that point he revealed the truth to me: the prison in the children’s imagination was the orphanage. I wanted to go and see it, in my eyes it looked like a gigantic kindergarten. Over time I developed the desire to know who had brought me into the world. My mother encouraged me, she said that she would also like to meet her to thank her because I had been a gift in her life. But the law closed all doors to me. No one could tell me the name of the woman who had given birth to me. I’ve done everything: I went to Who saw it?I got help from a lawyer from the Penelope association, I underwent a do-it-yourself genetic test from a laboratory in Texas which then puts the DNA online.”
From there, following the trail of a very distant relative, and many other searches later, Maria arrived at her mother. «We met on the day and time I was born. After giving birth they took me away immediately and she had never seen me. She was 21 years old, it was her family who forced her not to keep me with her. Then she got married and had other children. After that meeting I left her to her life, it was enough for me to be able to see her and know her story. My mother remained the one who raised me and who I looked after until my last day.”
Michele Cornello’s testimony
Michele Cornello remained in that orphanage for a year and a half. «I have no memories of the institute, I have always been convinced that mom and dad were my real parents. It was on the eve of my wedding, at 28, that I had the first vague suspicion about my origins. The day I had to go to the Bari Polyclinic to retrieve the birth certificate, I found my father in front of the hospital entrance who already had the document in his hand. It seemed strange to me that he wanted to get ahead of me, I talked about it with my future wife, but then I ended up not thinking about it anymore».
A few years later, a colleague of Michele’s wife, during a very banal conversation, uttered a sentence that was normal for her: «I no longer remember who between your husband and his sister was adopted». The strange episode of many years before made sense. «I discovered thus», continues Michele, «that everyone in the neighborhood knew that I was adopted, but out of a sense of protection no one had ever told me anything. Furthermore, we lived in the building opposite the orphanage. My father was already dead and my mother was so old and vulnerable that I didn’t want to reveal anything to her. But from that moment I decided that I would have done anything to find out who my mother was. I didn’t want to reproach her for anything or claim anything, just to know if I was born from an act of love.”
For Michele it was a very complicated search. «I was registered at the registry office as Mario and with a fictitious surname, Cervellini, but Everyone at home had always called me Michele. After much effort and obstinacy I found my mother’s name and discovered that she was still alive. He finally agreed to meet me. I discovered that she was a widow of a soldier killed in the war and with a son when she fell in love, reciprocated, with a younger man. She got pregnant, he wanted to marry her, but the family hindered him in every way. And in that era, especially in the South, it was a disgrace raising a child without a father. So, after the birth, he entrusted me to the orphanage and during the first months he also came to visit me.
After that first meeting there were others, I was close to her in the last years of her life. And this was a comfort to me, even though I was aware that I was lucky to grow up in my adoptive family, because I am a happy manwith two children, three grandchildren, and I received so much love.”
The comment of the archbishop of Bari
Among the people who attended the first screening of Cradle brothers the archbishop of Bari was also there, Monsignor Giuseppe Satrianopresent as an ecclesiastic but also as the son of a man who grew up in the Rome orphanage and then adopted: «My father’s life was peaceful, but the desire to meet his mother never abandoned him. In his last moments of life, as he said goodbye to us children, he had the strength to tell us: “I’m going to meet my mother”.
What emotions did watching the documentary arouse in you?
«The director, sensitive and attentive, was able to create a compelling narrative that made the Bari orphanage, and his meritorious work, a treasure chest of fruitful emotions».
As bishop of Bari, did you already know the long history of the orphanage?
«No, and as a spectator I felt accompanied into the lives of the protagonists. Their still vibrant stories touch the heart. They are lives full of pain and joy, beauty and sadness, they exude truth.”
In your opinion, what role has the Church played in this two-sided phenomenon, abandonment on the one hand and acceptance on the other?
«These were the post-war years, years of reconstruction of a people’s identity. The Church accepted the challenge of that discomfort, choosing the path of proximity. Especially women’s religious institutes have come to the forefront. In Bari the Handmaids of Charity revealed themselves to be a concentration of humanity and were able to create, with the health workers, a beautiful page in the history of this city.”
