Area reserved for the religious community: «These signs on the doors are old, we must remove them. Since the boys live with us, we also share the living room and dining room, “says Don Domenico Scibetta. The “boys” are young in alternative detention to prison And Don Scibetta, a priest of the servants of charity born in Brianza 56 years ago, has been from 13 Director of the Don Guanella house.
We are in Barza di Ispra, the Lombard bank of Lake Maggiore, in a ten hectare park, as large as fourteen football fields. Casa Don Guanella is located here, inside Villa Mongini, eighteenth -century residence in whose over one hundred rooms the musician friends of Pietro Mongini, tenor of the first of theid, and King Umberto I of Savoy, stayed. Precisely in this structure, starting from 1934, The Guanellians welcomed their novices. Don Domenico welcomes us in his office: “It all started when we risked imploding, right at that moment Don Guanella began to explode”.
It is 2017 and the novitiate remains only a corner of the house, often empty. But the Jubilee of Mercy has just ended and the religious community feels “the need to dare new forms of response”. Then he puts himself “in question, in discernment, starting from the peculiar characteristics of the founder of the founder, St. Luigi Guanella, who said:” The poor, the needy, put him in the canteen with you “”. Religious decide to allocate part of the villa to four refugee families. Then they think of the separate fathers, but without result. Until a lady asks for hospitality for the son of a friend, ended up in prison for futile reasons. The community accepts, having already hosted detained people. The first, remembers one of the older confreres, had arrived in Barza Christmas night of 1983…
(Photo by Andrea Carruba)
