Grazia Ruotolo with Luciano Regolo in front of the portrait of Don Dolindo.
Grazia Ruotolo, Frattarolo widow, passed away at 12 o’clock on November 13th, on tiptoe, suddenly, surprising her loved ones as she has always done throughout your life, through strength, determination, generosity, love for God and others. For decades she dedicated herself to cultivating the memory and amplifying the evangelical commitment of the servant of God Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), that cousin whom she called “uncle” not only out of respect but out of a visceral, palpable and indelible affection in his years. His Neapolitan house, in via Crispi, like his heart, was always open to anyone who knocked on the door because he wanted to know better the figure of the servant of God, or to pray in front of the small statue of the Madonna of Lourdes that Don Dolindo saw come to life on the altar and which she lovingly guarded with many other relics of her “uncle”. They also arrived in groups, lay people, priests, nuns…
He had recently had the booklet published Novena of abandonmentconvinced that total and convinced trust in the Lord was the “medicine of modern times”, dominated by fears and selfishness, with that expression bequeathed to every believer by the servant of God: “Jesus, take care of it”. Grazia stubbornly wanted these words to be the title of the book with her memoirs collected by the writer and published three years ago by Ares, already translated in various countries around the world, from Spain to France, from Poland to the United States
We met for the first time for this job. It was November 19, 2019, the forty-ninth anniversary of Don Dolindo’s death. It was the beginning of a real journey with a wonderful companion, over ninety years old but with the enthusiasm and attitude of a girl, strongly determined to preserve and spread the memory of this very particular relative of hers who she loved since childhood and continued to love and study until his last day on this earth. Formally she was not, as everyone called her, the “niece of Don Dolindo”, since her father and the Neapolitan mystic were first cousins, children of two brothers, but Grazia had always considered him a true uncle and above all a spiritual guide. It was he who celebrated her wedding in 1962 with Luigi Frattarolo and who left her a strange message written behind a small image in which he “prophesied” that he would see up to the fourth generation of his family and above all that he had to “give God many blessed children” . Luigi, who passed away prematurely in 1977, and she only had one, the beloved Giusi, but as Grazia herself underlined, being moved, thanks to Don Dolindo, by his work to make known, she had many, who came to visit her , who asked her for prayers, who asked her to go with them to the tomb of Don Dolindo at the Gesù Vecchio, to knock three times on the tombstone and entrust him with some trouble.
The conversations with Grazia entered the soul. She was a brilliant, ironic, strong-minded woman who had been an entrepreneur for a long time, but who hid an uncommon sensitivity behind her decision-making, which allowed her to grasp the most precious spiritual legacy of her priest uncle right down to its most intimate depths. Grazia could easily convince you to do as she said, without ever giving you the idea of bullying you precisely because of this genuine combination of strength and sweetness.
Now it is beautiful to imagine her radiant in heaven next to her uncle “Apostle of Naples” as Padre Pio of Pietrelcina defined him, and to continue from up there, at his side, the feat of touching hearts and bringing them closer to Jesus.
