London / Charity in North Kensington

“…and John started serving the homeless people like him”
A soup kitchen: something that doesn’t seem to solve much, especially in this day and age, but that can change the way we look at ourselves–just as is happening at a church near Notting Hill

by Fabrizio Rossi

London. It’s Sunday, early afternoon. The red brick courtyard of St. Pius X (located in North Kensington, a working-class neighborhood bordering the upscale Notting Hill) slowly fills up with homeless, immigrants, and all kinds of poor people. They come in dribs and drabs. At the end, there will be around a hundred of them. They are welcomed by two Missionaries of Charity (Mother Theresa’s nuns), who invite them to step down to a hall that can barely contain them. It is shortly before 3 pm, and Mass is about to start. Some go in; others stay out for a smoke. They wait for the hot food that the nuns will distribute at the end, helped by twenty-plus volunteers, almost all belonging to Catholic associations and lay movements, CL included. Riccardo, who works in marketing for a multinational, says, “We just serve some roast and mashed potatoes, and wash some dishes, that’s all. Afterwards, some thank us; many do not. Some ask for leftovers for a friend or for themselves (‘Take away! Take away!’). Ours is a very simple gesture, seemingly unable to change society, like the British charities would like. I am the one who changes—those homeless people are helping me better understand who I am and what I want out of life.” Many of the assisted are alcoholics. Dionino, who works in the world of finance, explains: “Others have drugs and prison in their past. Many of them are simply old people searching for companionship. Going there is for me a constant education”—one that even changes the way he is in his office. “You start becoming aware of others, for example of the colleague who needs a hand.” A precious gesture in itself, but even more so considering the current crisis, which is bringing to the surface man’s real need, which is not so much for material comfort as for companionship. Even the poor understand that it is more than hot food that they find there—like Hailu, of Ethiopian descent, who told the volunteers, “You might not realize it, but you are the arms of Christ to me.” Some of the guests, won over by being at the receiving end of such gratuitousness, decide in turn to help the others. Ulisse, who is completing his Astrophysics doctorate in Durham, recounts, “The last time I went to charitable work, one of the homeless people, named John, asked me to eat with him. I told him that I wasn’t there to eat but to serve them. One minute later, John started waiting on the other guests.” Mother Theresa’s nuns don’t beat around the bush to describe the heart of this gesture: “We simply want to share God’s love with other people.” For this reason, on the afternoon of December 20th they, along with the CL friends, went to Kilburn High Road, on the outskirts of London, to sing Christmas carols. “We wanted to bring the light of Christ to the darkness of our city, without fear of telling everybody that Christ was born.”  This time, though, the homeless were the ones offering hot tea to curious passersby.