The poor, whose Day proclaimed by Pope Francis is celebrated today, 17 November, are also the protagonists of the first Synodal Assembly of the Italian Church. And as protagonists they presented, together with Caritas operators, «experiences and testimonies. Seven, in particular, who tend to start from them and do charity work, to build a more just society with the poor at the center and to activate community processes”, explained Don Marco Pagniello, director of Italian Caritas. Among the special attentions there is the house “which many do not have or could lose”.
According to the Poverty Report, this year titled “Blades of grass between the cracks. Answers of hope”, absolute poverty in Italy affects 5 million 694 thousand people, almost a tenth of the population. Those who work, but intermittently, with low wages and atypical contracts are also poor. The Dossier, which was published in view of the World Day of the Poor, notes that «from 2014 to 2023 the number of poor families living in the North practically doubled, going from 506 thousand households to almost one million (+97.2%). If we look at the rest of the country, poverty is increasing by +28.6% in the areas of the Center and +12.1% in those of the South (the national figure is +42.8%). The poverty figure is “the highest in the historical series, showing no signs of decreasing”. Caritas calls for a return to universalistic measures that are more capable of impacting absolute poverty. «Now the ADI (to date received by 697,640 families) is intended only for families with non-employable people, such as minors and disabled people, while the SFL is reserved for those who are considered employable and require training courses for reintegration into work. This distinction has reduced the number of families reached by the citizen’s income by half.” Training and work support «designed for reintegration into work through training courses has demonstrated a reduced impact, with few people involved and short-term courses (on average 3-4 months), insufficient to guarantee effective reintegration into the job market» . A particular “alarm” for Caritas is for minors. «The incidence of absolute poverty among minors today is at an all-time high», we read in the Report, «equal to 13.8%: the highest value in the series reconstructed by Istat (it was 13.4% in 2022) and all other age groups.” Overall, therefore, “there are 1 million 295 thousand poor children: almost one in four poor people is a minor”.
But there are also signs of hope, as evidenced by the experiences told to the approximately one thousand participants in the First Synodal Assembly of the Italian Church. The focus is on the Roma Solidarity cooperative, which wants to address the problem of domestic loneliness by strengthening local relationships starting from the parishes.
Or the Solidarity Neighborhoods project, which involves 16 parishes of the capital which aims to promote participation and responsibility among citizens by supporting volunteering and various types of aggregations. Among the experiences there are still the Opportunity Workshop project, dedicated to work and in collaboration with the Lazio Region and the Municipality of Rome, and Caritas art, to recover the artistic talents of the most fragile people, because “beauty is everyone’s right” . Then there is the Operational Manual of Rights aimed at those, operators, volunteers, who see the condition of the people they encounter worsening due to a lack of useful information on their condition (www.caritasroma/manualediritti). Caritas of Rome also thought about redesigning an “old” sign work commissioned by the then director of Caritas of Rome, Don Luigi DI Liegro. And that is Villa Glori, the complex intended for AIDS patients. And finally the “widespread reception” project to support people and families to give them time to regain their strength, find a rental contract, get treatment, learn the language…
