«Evil is won together. Joy is located together ». With these words Pope Leo XIV welcomed the boys of the historic exodus caravan of Don Antonio Mazzi’s historic caravan of the Historical Caravan. A meeting full of emotion, which took place on the occasion of the International Day against Drugs And that marked a symbolic stop of the long bicycle trip that started last May from Madagascar to celebrate the forty years of the Foundation.
In thirteen, among young people on the path of recovery, operators and educators, they arrived in Rome with their bicycles, witnesses of a difficult but viable road: the one that leads out of addictions, towards a new life. Their presence in front of the Pope is part of a wider journey, made of meetings, testimonies and sharing, which for four decades has been the beating heart of Exodus.
A long journey forty years
It was 1984 when Don Mazzi, starting from the Lambro park in Milan, gave birth to his first “caravan”: a symbolic and concrete journey, to bring to the squares, among the people, the voice of those who want to get out of the tunnel of drugs and addictions. Since then, Exodus has become a network of houses, educational projects and therapeutic communities, present throughout Italy and abroad, always animated by a spirit of reception, prevention and social denunciation.
“Our June 26 this year lasts four months,” explains Franco Taverna, vice -president of Exodus and Head of the caravan. “Until October, we will travel over five thousand kilometers through twelve Italian regions, meeting hundreds of young people, families, groups, to talk about the drama of the poles dependencies and the need for prevention». A journey that is not only celebration, but alarm cry and a sign of hope.
The pope’s embrace: “You are witnesses that changing is possible”
The meeting with Pope Leone XIV represented the most intense moment of the path: “Your presence is a testimony of freedom,” said the Pontiff, citing his predecessor Francesco and his habit of questioning himself by entering the prisons: “Why are they and not me?”.
«The addictions – he continued – are an invisible prison that you have known and fought. The errors, the suffering, but above all the desire for life you are carriers, make you witnesses that changing is possible. The Church needs you. Humanity needs you. Education and politics need you. “
A strong invitation to feel protagonists of a world that can and must change, together, just as the name chosen by Don Mazzi suggests: Exodus, the exodus, the path to freedom.
On the way to “return to hope”
The current caravan, which started from Madagascar, will cross Italy from Lombardy to Sicily, bringing with it The story of the suffering, of errors, but also of the rebirth of many boys marked by addictions. Not only an anniversary, therefore, but “a focus of the drama and hopes contained in the exodus – explains Taverna – a dimension that the whole world needs, from justice to culture, from communication to politics”.
The journey now continues towards Lonato del Garda, in the province of Brescia, and then touch the Veneto and continue along the peninsula until October. Those who want can follow the stages on the website www.carovana40.it and on the social channels of the Foundation.
A path forty years long, but always current, because as the Pope recalled, “evil is won together. Joy is located together ».
