Holiness is not perfection. It is the first thing that we are quick to point out when talking about miracles, stigmata and blessed: saints are deceitful people like us, they make mistakes, sometimes they even have a bad temper. As if to say: anyone can aspire to bliss.
Federica Gentile, with her practical attitude and famous silvery voice, however, she doesn’t seem to have all this concern: it’s as if she were looking in another direction, if possible even more earthly, everyday. That of starting over. In his eyes, behind every name day, every canonization there is an even higher promise than future beatification: the ability to start again. Today. Always. Every time we get lost. «Many hagiographies are stories of redemption, rapprochement or conversion», he explains. «They are, therefore, a beautiful warning because they remind us that the strength of the Church is mercy: there is always the possibility of starting again. To return home.”
And it is with this spirit – of feeling at home, of finding one’s place in the world – that the well-known speaker and television presenter (for years the voice and soul of Rtl 102.5, now moved to Rai) began the adventure of the program Saints for a day: the morning strip of Rai Radio1, broadcast from Monday to Friday at 11.30, which he hosts together with Don Walter Insero. Every morning we remember the saint of the day, whose existence is reinterpreted in a pop key between history, music and spirituality. «The first episode was broadcast on September 29th: the feast of the Holy Archangels», he adds smiling, and then takes out a medal of Saint Michael: «I always wear it around my neck»…
Read the complete interview with Federica Gentile in the issue of Credere distributed in newsstands and religious bookshops from Thursday 4 December and in parishes from Saturday 6 December. Or purchase a digital copy www.edicolasanpaolo.it
IN COLLABORATION WITH CREDERE
Credere, the magazine for living the “adventure of faith”
BELIEVE is the magazine that offers you stories, characters and columns every week to inspire faith in everyday life. Already chosen as the “Official Magazine of the Jubilee of Mercy”, it is a newspaper rich in content for the spirit, with many testimonies of famous people and ordinary people and the gestures and words of Pope Francis, closer than ever.
Discover the magazine and subscribe »
