For the television audience, at least at the beginning, the “dress” of Sister Paola, who disappeared at 77 years of April 1st, were the scarf and the Lazio flag, even if her presence in its image, recently, had accustomed the spectators to see its real, religious side more and more. In 2023 Sister Paola D’Auria had celebrated 50 years of consecrated life, and told Christian family, With intelligence and self -irony that knew how to get to the substance, of how it had become a dear price nun with pain and effort, and how she had combined the dress of School nuns of Christ the king with public visibility, believing convinced that the streets of the Lord are infinite.
Of conviction, moreover, he had to have had so much immediately, because to conquer that dress he had to fight not a little since his vocation had been contrasted in the family: “I had just become adult,” he said, “My mother went to denounce the convinced nuns who kept me against my will. She who worked on the mail postponed back all my letters because she no longer wanted to see me or hear. Fortunately, my brothers were close to me. Then I went to a convent where there were many foreign nuns. From outside they said to me: “Why did you do all this battle to end up in such a place?”. You can see that it was my vocation. For 50 years I taught, then I dedicated myself to the poor, going to prison the prisoners asked me to bring greetings to their families and there I discovered a new world that I did not know ».
At the time of the interview Sister Paola was the soul of the SO.SPE village., From solidarity and hope, a group of family homes that hosts girls in difficulty: «We send them to school, we try to insert them in the world of work, to many When they are ready I am looking for a house where they go to live, even if they come back to be with us, they take their children when they don’t have time to keep them, but I always try to give them a normal life».
In the community he had contacts with the novices: «There are many girls who tell me: “I would like to share this life with you,” he said, “perhaps because they see me day and night with the poor and think they will also do the same thing, but many times to move them is not the desire to become a nun, but the desire to do something for others. For this there is the novitiate, because every person who decides to undertake religious life will make a path of study, of prayer. If it is true that most enters with the real belief of embarking on consecrated life, there are also those who enter because they are dissatisfied: in these cases there are those who remain and those who slowly notice that religious life is not for her ».
Thus explained the role of the community of nuns and training on this path: “The person doing the path of preparation understands himself if it is his way. At the first difficulties, I also sometimes happened to ask me “maybe my mother was right?”, But the desire to do something different than my life and for others was stronger. I was for 12 years a Those that footballbut I never had problems because my presence on television spoke all of a religious presence, inside me there was that strength ».
