From afar, passing on the 7th, Gratosoglio is a shape of tall and square white towers, at the point where Milan, at its extreme south, thinly inside Rozzano Without any other solution of continuity that the large Fiordaliso shopping center, yes the one in which the four unfortunate in all senses, the largest 13 years the smallest 11, took refuge by running away on foot after being Overwhelmed and killed aboard a Citroen stolen from French tourists housed in a nearby B&B, Cecilia de Astis, a pensioner of 71 walking on the sidewalk in via Saponaro at the height of number 40.
It is the road that cuts straight Milan from the historic center to the extreme south to beyond the belt that delimits the municipality of the Lombard capital: on the one hand it runs parallel to the first stretch of the Milan-Genova motorway, in the air at the height of the Cantalupa Palazzi-SERPENONE located on a very euphemistic “Via del Mare”, on the other to the line of the tram number 15 which unites in about an hour and 33 travel stops, the central Piazza Fontana, the place of other tragic memories, a stone’s throw from the Duomo and the Royal Palace at the Humanitas hospital.
Just travel the entire line of the tram to guess the social fabric that changes and the difficulties of complex nearby that achieve: in short, it is not the same as taking the subway in Manhattan to get to Coney Island in New York, but something vaguely resembling small that makes us understand that Milan, like all cities of a certain size, is many things including its peripheral complexities.
A few steps from the place of the accident, in which Mrs. Cecilia died, from the birth of the towers until 2023 there was a community of the charity nuns founded by the Beate Capitanio and Gerosa, for a period years ago guided volcanic guided Sister Stefanina Donandoni, not accidentally the same surname of the former AC Milan and of the national team (their fathers were cousins), good at intercepting children and boys. and to communicate with them. In those rooms now, since last November, there is a tent of Mamre, the new space for the meeting between prisoners on the permit and society.
Father Eugenio Brambilla
The parish Maria Mother of the Church was born in 1967, when the “historical” church of San Barnaba became insufficient, she joined her precisely to serve the then new popular houses built between 1967 and 1971 And for a long time, until 2009, from the Barnabite Fathers.
Among them was Father Eugenio Brambilla, president of the Sicomoro Foundation, a great vocation for teaching with capital, to which the Milan inspiration in 2001 suggested the Cares, a second opportunity schoolwhich refers, “from afar” his words, to the idea that led Don Lorenzo Milani, in 1954, to improvise a school in the parish of Sant’Andrea di Barbiana, on the Mugello mountains.
At Gratosoglio, Father Brambilla returns every day for the schooltoday in via Arcadia, leaning against the classrooms of a real school, while in the past years it was, as Barbiana, in the premises of the parish: His mission is to turn up the boys that the compulsory school has lost on the street. Father Brambilla, Even if he no longer lives there, even if the church has returned to the secular clergy and is now led by Don Paolo Steffano, he is still at home in the neighborhoodamong his complicated boys: “The context of Gratosoglio in the last twenty years has undergone very relevant mutations. Today it is inhabited in the vast majority of foreign people. The most Italian part historically linked to the fabric of the neighborhood, has decreased in the sense that the criteria for access to popular construction did not allow the children of the first families settled to remain: Once made a family, once married, not finding a place in public housing at Gratosoglio they went to live elsewhere. This continually leaving in this mode the neighborhood, of course, has created as a consequence a very mixed residence, very different from the point of view of the people who live there. I think that mixed criteria should be reasoned for access to popular construction, so that the welcome to poverty does not completely exclude the possibility for those who were born in the neighborhood to stay there if they want it. I have in mind a young family, whom I know very well, who married to Gratosoglio had chosen to stay, not having the requirements to find a house in a tower, has chosen to leave because he says that the situation is becoming unsustainable for the concentration of problematicity that has been creating “.
Problems similar to those of many suburbs, in which complexity add up: “Gratosoglio has always been a peripheral quarterfinal”, notes Father Brambilla, “From the point of view of the services, of the free time of the boys, of the young, it has difficulty, despite the goodwill and commitment of different associations of the third sector that operate there. To this is added the fact that over the years they have ended up being concentrated a series of further complexities in a neighborhood that already had their own: There are two short distance Roma camps, one in the red church, the other on the Selvanesco, from whose four kids come, to this which is already a criticality, the so -called former yellow school was added years ago, a structure to welcome homelessness: the boys often spoke to me in the oratory of negative experiences on the tram they took in the morning to go to school. I believe that a social policy that concentrates different difficulties of different people in a place does not produce good fruits because it complicates the integration paths of all kinds ».
The second opportunity school is in this a litmus test, in an attempt to hump up for the dispersed guys, the difficulties are encountered: «In the specific case of what happened, The first response we are talking about, when dealing with the Roma camps, is “dismantling”, “clearing”, but it only means moving the difficulty elsewhere: For me the big problem, which also involves me as a project on the territory, is that somehow you can ensure that these young people, very young, among other things, have a cultural training that also allows him some more reasoning, and above all help them to use intelligently once that otherwise they throw away by making bravate who then transform into tragedies. We will never have security if we just move the problem, the only way we have to deal with it, in an attempt to intergration, is to ensure that the children of the Roma community are sent to school, to help them live in minimally balanced social contexts. We have intercepted some at the school over the years, I know the difficulties because sometimes at school they are not sent: with some we have also had good satisfactions we managed to bring them to the diploma, in other cases the families resist. I believe that this tragedy should be read in the lack of tools to face life. I know that when I speak of education, training, civic education, they tell me “but it will take a century”, it is also true, but if we ever start … certainly the problem remains that this is why the collaboration of adults is needed and sometimes that is difficult, but I remain convinced that the theme of the school must be the subject of bargaining: something like “if you want to be helped, as a counterpart, you guarantee me that your children live a balanced education”. And I believe that we should insist on this ».
Words not too different from those who pronounced Don Don Paolo Steffano at the funeral of Mrs. Cecilia, citing Fabrizio De André “from the diamonds nothing arises. We know how it continues (from the manure the flowers are born) and we here in Gratosoglio certainly have no diamonds. But we have many flowers, let’s not forget them. And if we don’t see them, let’s go looking for them. The shots of anger are not needed ». He chose the word “indignation” by recognizing that everyone tries it in the neighborhood in front of the tragedy of Mrs. Cecilia, the pain of her dignified and calm family, “but anger is not needed. The speeches are not needed, the proclamations, let alone discharge it, the unloading of responsibility. Not even the documents on the suburbs are needed, not even the encyclicals on peaceful coexistence. Concrete facts are needed». He mentioned Don Raffaèagain with the verses of the singer -songwriter of the suburbs “first page, twenty news, twenty -one injustices, the state he makes, he skirts, is indignant, is committed, then throws the sponge with granity” ».
Here, he said, “I like to imagine that Gratosoglio needs institutions, private individuals who invest continuously in educational poverty, school, sports associations, neighborhood cooperatives and parishes”.
Rethinking to the tragic story, that such remains from wherever you look at it, the words of Cristina Maggiauntil a few weeks ago, president of the Court for minors of Brescia who at a recent conference entitled, Redish the community: minor crime authorshe said: «These guys who come to face a juvenile criminal trial, before being angry and unpleasant teenagers, were children whose “village” did not deal with. It is necessary to intercept this critical situation of solitude or lives not seen: the community must intervene and must be questioned well before the criminal trial. The juvenile criminal trial wants to tend to empower the boy with respect to the deviant agita, the evil caused to the victim or the context in which he lives, restoring hope “.
Lives not seen were the four children who killed in via Saponaro, too small also to undergo a trial. Too lonely, in the age of embitancy, to their destiny that marked the fate of another person.
