Summarizing the figure of Don Carlo Gnocchi, the unforgettable “father of the mutilated”, in the fifteenth year of his beatification, which took place on 25 October 2009, also the day of the anniversary of his birth (in 1902), is not a simple thing. Just as it is not easy to carry forward the weight of his legacy, especially the immaterial one: love for young people, educational passion, enthusiasm for the journey, activism, that concrete action for others which led him to dedicate himself to a great work of charity which has crossed existential boundaries.
The non-profit foundation that bears his name, which he established over seventy years ago for the care of child victims of war and polio, is today a leading private entity in the health-rehabilitation and social-welfare sector with twenty-three rehabilitation centers , plus two IRCCS, eight RSAs and twenty-eight local polyclinics spread across nine regions and over fifty localities. «His teachings certainly represent a challenge in today’s context, also because there are few educational realities that propose values such as solidarity, fraternity, a coexistence capable of pursuing the common good», comments Don Vincenzo Barbante, president of the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation , which operates in the field of assistance and rehabilitation (orthopaedic, neurological, cardiological and respiratory) of fragile people. «I believe that there is an important perspective, specific to our society, which consists in learning to take care of ourselves, not to conform, but at the same time we need to know how to go further to discover the fact that each of us is the bearer of a gift that in its uniqueness it is aimed at the common good. Those who are fragile must not simply be included because of their condition, but as an added value.”
What does it mean to lead a complex and articulated reality like the Foundation, guaranteeing fidelity and coherence to the mandate of a founder who is now blessed and perhaps soon to be sainted? «Giving answers to the needs of our time with great flexibility, not remaining anchored to models of the past, but being capable of paying attention to today’s urgencies. Also taking up a suggestion from Pope Francis, we are called as Don Carlo did to offer today’s man, in addition to body therapies, also medicines for the soul, signs of the consolation of God’s tenderness, which Don Carlo lived in concrete terms through that way to approach young amputees and polio sufferers, sharing that situation with them. He always said that the first form of treatment is relationship. Don Carlo cared for others in a logic of social inclusion, integration and looked at the continuity of existence, not only at the detail, however serious at times, of suffering”, he explains.
With a look beyond the border, in the context of international cooperation, thanks to the projects and activities of the Don Gnocchi NGO Foundation, we work to build increasingly resilient and inclusive communities: in the south-western part of Ukraine, in Chortkiv, in support of a home for the disabled transformed in the last two years into a reception home for war refugees, and in Bosnia, where the twentieth year of collaboration with the rehabilitation center for children with disabilities has just been celebrated, today of excellence in that territory . But also Bolivia, Ecuador, Myanmar, Cambodia and recently the launch of a project with the Guanellian fathers for the training of occupational therapists in the Philippines: the objective is to develop training models focused on occupational therapy and quality of life, replicable in other countries.
In the footsteps of Don Gnocchi, the priest who looked for God among men. Don Gnocchi who, at the outbreak of the Second World War, had enlisted as a volunteer chaplain among the Alpine troops and had experienced the dramatic retreat from Russia. Don Gnocchi, example of true Christian closeness to those who suffer. And again, Don Gnocchi author of the thrilling pages of his most famous writing, Christ with the Alpine troops.
«One of the expressions that strikes me most, among the many, is “sick of the infinite”, that thirst for meaning that every man and woman carries within themselves. For him this nostalgia for God had materialized in a journey of continuous search for his face, which he managed to find in those who suffered, in particular in the experience of war, in the Alpine soldiers who entrusted the last moments of their existence to him. Unfortunately, man has little memory of the negative events he has experienced, which on the contrary should sound like a warning not to make certain mistakes again, in the awareness that life is fragile. Precisely for this reason, his is a very timely message: telling everyone not to stop searching for meaning, not to give in to banality, to conformism, but to live the extraordinary experience of life with originality.”
An originality that should lead us to leave no one behind: the particular for the universal.
In the photo, Don Vincenzo Barbante at the Don Gnocchi Center in Falconara.
