On the occasion of the World Autism Day on Autism, established by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, for April 2, we relaunch Pizzaut, the miracle of inclusion, article by Francesca Amé published in the weekly belief (12/2024), in which Nico Acampora tells how and why he founded Pizzaut, the first restaurant managed by autistic people. A project appreciated by Pope Francis as by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and also presented at the UN, where Last April Acampora and his boys served the pizzas to the delegations present in New York.
“I am a person on the way,” he says Nico Acampora on the phone. More than on the way, running: speaks quickly while moving with the car from one to the other of the restaurants that has opened. It’s evening, his day is still long. Acampora, 54 years old and an unmistakable face (black glasses, long beard, open smile) is the father of Pizza Aut, the first restaurant in Italy managed by young autistic according to the motto “we nourish the inclusion”. Pizza Aut has existed since 2017 first in the deaf, through some forays into restaurants in the Hinterland in Milan, then with the first place in Cassina de ‘Pecchi, just outside the Lombard metropolis, and then with a second restaurant in Monza. Pizza aut has baked pizzas everywhere (and they are excellent!): At the end of January 2024 the staff went to Brussels, to the European Parliament, serving pizza to parliamentarians, including President Roberta Metsola. Pizza Aut was also in the restaurants of Palazzo Madama and Montecitorio, so much so that President Sergio Mattarella in his latest year -end speech mentioned the Acampora project as a prodigious example of inclusion “Education is such only if things change,” says Acampora convinced, one who knows it well. In the nineties he operated in the Martesana youth aggregation centers: «I worked several years with serious disabled people and what he sent me out of my mind was that the only goal proposed was to maintain their residual skills. Instead I wanted to change everything, I wanted to change the world for the better, “he says.
The revolution came home, in 2010, unexpected. At his second son, Leo, who is 15 years old today but then he was only 2, is diagnosed with autism. “When I knew I passed out,” recalls Acampora, “I cried like a desperate: my wife Stefania, a nurse at the San Gerardo di Monza, at that time was the rock of our family (the couple also has a 17 -year -old daughter Giulia, ed.). By reaction, I worked a lot outside the home: I had a company of mine who coordinated projects with disadvantaged teenagers, I was always busy ». Then, in one of the many nights without sleep, the intuition: Acampora recalls the serenity of little Leo in the kitchen every time he kneads pizza, and understands that that simple and precious activity can be “the answer”. Not only for Leo, but for many guys like him. «I involved some young autism, teaching them to make the dough, then we grew up in number and capacity. The teenagers with whom I worked helped me with the graphics for the menus: we shot with a van in the area and we prepared our pizzas ».
In the history of Nico Acampora there are many of those coincidences that it is difficult to think is a chance: after his participation in the well -known television program You yes que valesthe boys of Pizza Aut begin to be hosted more and more often in the restaurants in the area and the project becomes the main work for Acampora. “My father taught me that if there is a problem, it means that there are at least five solutions: it is up to you to you,” continues Acampora, who today gives work to 35 young autistic young people in the two places he opened. «We are talking about true work, not of a pastime: an indefinite job, with a salary. A job that shows these guys who are not a weight for society, but a resource ».
Now Acampora is already at the next challenge: to export the Pizza model Aut. “The idea suggested to me time ago Maria De Filippi who said to me:” Why do you stop at a restaurant? Do you make a franchise! “. Then he made me laugh, but he was right. The venue, however, requires large investments and complex management: my idea is instead of creating a pizza-a bus fleet, truck food financed by us, to be managed to various associations, one for each province. We will start with Lombardy. Each association will have to undertake to take 4 or 5 autistic boys. Because the work is dignity, “he explains, like a river in full.
It slows down only when he evokes the most important meeting: in April 2022, together with his boys, he was received in private hearing by Pope Francis. «I am a simple provincial educator, one raised in Cernusco sul Naviglio among the public housing, I am a confused, fragile man, a person on the way. The death of my father and my mother’s disease when I was very young they scored me: I was an angry boy with the world and with God. I long kept at a safe distance from faith: Pizza Aut made the miracle, it allowed me to meet extraordinary people. The meeting with Pope Francis was a crazy detonator. Of that day I have very clear memories, like that autistic child who continued to cry in the hearing and calmed himself only among the legs of the Holy Father who kept him there, serenely. And then the words of esteem of the Pope who said to my boys: “You are showing that the disabled person can be a good Samaritan”. We had cooked the pizza with the without roof of St. Peter’s Square and I remember that one of these, to thank us, designed the face of Christ on the cardboard. I still get excited, if I think about it ».
Then there are two people that Acampora quotes continuously because they “embody the real faith for me”: they are Monsignor Luca Raimondi, auxiliary bishop of Milan, and Sister Veronica Donatello, head of the National Service for the pastoral care of people with the disability of the CEIappointed by the Pope Consultor of the Vatican Dicastery for communication. With both there is assiduous attendance, mutual esteem, solid friendship. “I have never lived the autism of my son Leo as a misfortune and I stopped disturbing myself for what everyone calls the “after us”. I want to build this “after” “during us”! Work can make miracles. The other night the mother of an autistic boy told me that the Lord sent me Leo so that I invent Pizza Aut. I don’t like this thought, I don’t believe in a vindictive god. If there is, God is always good ».
