«My heartfelt prayer is the Hail Mary, because there is everything, there is life and there is also death (… and in the hour of our death…). And it is addressed to the Mother par excellence: we are all ultimately children of a mother, of Mary, of a natural mother, and also of mother Earth. How can we not feel grateful for this look of great love that every mother has for her children?”. Fiamma Satta is a courageous woman: Roman writer and journalisthistorical voice of Radio 2 (for over twenty years she was the author and performer, with Fabio Visca, of the daily series Fabio & Fiamma), in 1993, at the age of 35, she had a terrible diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. A degenerative disease, which however did not put an end to his passion.
Since 2009, Fiamma has written a column and a blog entitled Otherwise affable on the pages and on the website of Gazzetta dello Sportcollaborates with art magazines and since 2019 has proposed within Geo (Rai3) the column Walking with youin which personalities from the world of culture and entertainment push their wheelchair to places dear to them, talking about them and telling their stories. Fiamma took one of these walks with Cardinal Matteo Zuppiarchbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, with whom a solid friendship was born.
A special companion
«I invited him as my special companion for one of the walks in Driving Away», says the journalist. «He, one of the busiest men in Italy, was extremely helpful. And I brought him back “home”, let’s say, because we went to the Roman basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, where Don Matteo was parish priest for 10 years.”
Fiamma says that the cardinal, as they looked inside the historic basilica, a symbolic place of the community of Sant’Egidio, he amazed her with his attentive gaze even on what is most difficult to see. «It is the Church I have been coming to for years», explains the journalist, «and yet, looking up, he pointed out to me a detail of the mosaic in the apse that I had never noticed: the hand of Jesus clasping the shoulder of Mary, his Mother. He’s hugging her. In that moment, I had a revelation, because it is a gesture of very tender humanity that you wouldn’t expect in a 13th century mosaic. The cardinal also explained to me that that gesture is there to tell us, over the centuries: “We love each other, so do you”.
In church, Fiamma Satta and Cardinal Zuppi also lit a candle for peace, because that gesture of the Son of God towards his Mother today more than ever seems unheard: «Cardinal Matteo (as you call him, ed.) reminded me how wars continue to create hell on earth. But he added that even in hell, glimpses of paradise open up, for example when people see you, when they compromise with you, when they remain human and you don’t become an enemy just because you belong to another people.”
Called everyone to joy
Like the cardinal, Fiamma Satta also loves the miracle of the wedding at Cana very much in the Gospel and remembers: «He told me that he has a predilection for that miracle because it seems “useless”, it doesn’t help anyone. But in this gift there is the superabundance of joy to which we are all called. I also love that song for the presence of Mary, active alongside Jesus. It is she, in fact, who notices the lack of wine which I have always understood as a lack of sharing.” After all, Maria is a mother, in fact.
«I also have two grown-up children», adds Fiamma. «And I’m proud of them. With my daughter and her partner, a New Zealand artist, I have just been to see, from the scaffolding, the restoration of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel: I almost touched the face of Christ the Judge. A powerful emotion, an encounter with the Divine, the art of Michelangelo and Beauty.”
However, one thought, as an authentic mother, never leaves the journalist: «I have multiple sclerosis and have lived in a wheelchair for many years. Today, despite everything, I am well, I work, I am cared for, I live in a wonderful house, I have a thousand interests. But what if my condition worsens, and what little autonomy I have left diminishes? Well, I would never want to be a burden to my children, to burden them. I will do everything to leave them free to live their lives.”
Love lets go and does not hold back, as Jesus said to Mary Magdalene on Easter day. «An image that I love is Raphael’s Madonna Tempi, preserved in the Pinacoteca in Munich. Since I discovered it years ago in an exhibition in Rome, it has been on the desktop of my computer and has not moved from there. Maria walks with her little son in her arms. Little Jesus, an elbow pointed at his mother’s chest, seems to be throwing a tantrum, like any child. And she reassures him with small pats on the bottom. An image of absolute naturalness and tender beauty. It’s all we need every day to live.”
