The initiative caused a stir Don Giovanni Salatino, who in the parish of San Giovanni Bosco, in Baggio, neighborhood on the outskirts of Milan, at the opening of the summer oratory in which 600 children and young people are enrolled, decided to entrust two educators of the Islamic faith with a moment of prayer separate from that shared by the majority of young people of the Catholic faith. Before and after, all together, but when turning to God, each group according to their own beliefs. She intervened in defense of the parish priest the diocese with an official note «The oratory remains a Catholic place with a clear confessional identity, and no one intends to question it. However, according to the statement Our Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, the Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in other religions…. The presence of young people of other faiths in the oratory does not weaken the Christian identity of those who welcome them. On the contrary, it can become an opportunity to rediscover it in more depth. Meeting those who live their religious faith with conviction, as often happens with Muslim children, can reawaken in young Christians the desire to deepen and live their tradition more seriously”
Ivano Zoppi, President of Pepita Ets, intervenes on the matter. Here is his reflection on the educational and welcoming role of the speakers:
We have been “inhabiting” oratories for twenty years and I have truly understood one thing: the oratory is not a place of worship disguised as a summer camp, it is an educational facility. It is one of the last remaining spaces in our neighborhoods where an adult simply chooses to be there for the children entrusted to him. And when I say kids I mean everyone who enters those gates, during the year, but especially in the summer.
The Baggio story is not just a news story, but a human issue. The parish priest did not deny the Christian identity of his community, he put it to the test in the oldest way that exists, that is, by welcoming. Six hundred registered children, an educator dedicated to integration, some leaders of the Muslim faith who are already within that community and who will continue to be there. It’s not a drift. It is exactly the educational work of every day, the one that is not newsworthy because it is made up of small and repeated gestures every day, with courage and patience.
There is only one question worth asking: if those kids aren’t in the oratory, where are they?
Because the alternative to the educational garrison is not a purer oratory. The alternative is the afternoon spent alone, it’s the street, it’s the screen as your only company, it’s the empty courtyard and no adults watching over it. When you remove the accompanying person you don’t get a more Italian or more Christian boy. Get a lonelier guy. And a lonely boy is a more fragile boy, always, regardless of how he prays or if he prays.
We who do this job see every day what it means for a boy to have someone waiting for him, who remembers his name, who entrusts him with a responsibility. A Muslim boy who works as an entertainer and accompanies the little ones is learning care, being among others, the beautiful burden of taking care of someone. He is doing exactly what the oratory has always existed for. Is all this worth less because in the evening he pronounces the name of God with words different from ours?
Identity cannot be guarded by putting up barriers around the courtyard. It is protected by living in it. A faith that is afraid of a boy gathered in prayer in the next room is a faith that has already forgotten itself a little. While education, the real one, knows no other path than presence. Being there. One boy at a time, one bond at a time. This is why I look with gratitude, not with alarm, at the educators and parish priests who keep the gates open every summer instead of closing them on principle.. They’re not undermining anything. They are doing the hardest and most necessary thing in a disintegrating time: holding together. One stretch of wall at a time, each in front of their own door. Embankments against intolerance and ghettoisation, to be built by welcoming, never excluding.
What is Pepita Ets
It is a social cooperative made up of educators who are experts in the planning and implementation of socio-educational interventions, training courses and entertainment activities in schools of all levels, public bodies, voluntary associations, oratories and other private social entities. For more than 20 years it has taken care of the well-being of children and young people, accompanying them in their growth path through activities to prevent and combat the phenomena of bullying, cyberbullying and sexting, so much so that it has become a reference for institutions and media bodies. It collaborates with university bodies and institutions on specific projects recognized for the purposes of the mandatory training of teachers and ATA staff required by the Ministry of Education and participates in international projects.
