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Saved by Hope
cover stories Pino was living “like a worm” and is now married and “would like to have children.” Nelson was stabbed by his father and now talks of forgiveness. Donatella, Matteo… A walk around the homes (and the stories) of a town in the Italian Marches where, thanks to a Christian friendship, scores of lives ruined by drugs
are flourishing again. Because they discovered “the certainty of something present that makes you sure of the future”

by Paolo Perego

Marco is crouching over the tiles he has just laid. Today it’s not raining, so he can finish laying the floor of the porch.
The columns are already standing; only the roof remains to be done, but the material will be here in a few days. Marco is 27; he comes from a small town outside Rome. He used to be on drugs; from cannabis he passed on to the needle. His is a story like many others: a job, a family and then disaster, and the presumption “of having the answer to everything that comes to meet you in life, until it’s just too much and you collapse under it, without hope.” Now he is coming out of it; he came to this community two years ago. “Now I can’t wait to go home.”

Home and hope. This is why we came here to a corner of the Italian Marches, near Macerata. It was worth travelling these 250 miles from Milan, to see a place where even “someone without hope” can be reborn. How? By meeting something good and solid; friendship and bricks, and foundations that are sound because they are laid on the faith, in the realization that Destiny is present: “The certainty of something present that makes you sure of the future,” as Fr. Giussani used to say.
The story of PARS is this: Faith, friendship and hope. All this set on a hill in Corridonia, in the village of San Michele Arcangelo. The signpost says “Cooperative Farm,” but there is much more. It is part of the PARS archipelago, a cooperative for rehabilitation of drug users with personality disorders. What they call double diagnosis. (PARS is the acronym in Italian for Prevention, Assistance, and Social Reintegration)
It is a small complex of brick buildings. It can be seen easily from the road, before you climb the three hairpin bends approaching it. Josè Berdini, the manager, is there to welcome us. An embrace and a coffee, and Josè begins to tell us his story. “In the mid 80s I joined Fr. Gelmini’s community of after falling victim to drugs myself, like many others. I managed to kick the habit; I changed. Then through my cousin, Giorgio Torrisetti and Lora, who is now my wife, I met the Movement of Communion and Liberation, to which they already belonged. Later, Fr. Gelmini was invited to the Rimini Meeting, and after his presentation invited everyone to help him in his work with drug addicts by offering a home to young people after rehabilitation in his community.” José laughed: “Soon after, Lora and I took in a real crazy character. The first evening he ruined a new bicycle.” One thing led to another, and in 1990 the Association was born, which later became a cooperative. In 2000 our dream was realized. “Giorgio and I had thought of setting up home together, with our families and two other friends, and beginning a new form of life along with young people from the rehabilitation center.” They found a smallholding outside Corridonia and then the funds needed. After three years of work, in summer 2003, the four families transferred to the new “family house” dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel. The house stands in the middle of the village beside the auditorium. Fifty yards away is the “Residential Structure for Social and Work Reinsertion.” Here we met Marco. It is a two-storied house, where the youngsters come after their rehabilitation therapy. Now they live here together and run the house themselves.

Pino “the miracle.” Marco also works as an apprentice to the village blacksmith, Armando, with his moustache, long hair, and a smile always on his face, who forges iron in the traditional way. Marco is proud as he shows us into the workshop opposite the house. “I can do some welding,” he says as he shows us some hand-made metal curls and designs for gates and fences. Then he goes on to tell us that he travels around the schools and the parishes, telling the kids that marijuana is serious stuff, that you start off with that, but you don’t know where it will lead you. A few feet away is where Pino works. Josè calls him “the miracle.” He came to the center eight years ago. “I was in a bad way,” he says, “I would always stay in bed. When your on it, you are like a worm. Then I decided to it wasn’t enough for me, because the person I had before me took me seriously. It was something really new. People on drugs think they can manage everything alone.” But Pino was reborn. And he is so grateful to those who gave him back his life that he doesn’t want to leave the community. He stayed on to work here. In the mornings, he hangs posters for the local council, and in the afternoon he assembles polystyrene molds in his workshop with another boy, Mauro. He proudly shows us photographs of his wedding to Carla in January last year. “Now we would like to have children,” he confides. The future has a different face. Now there is hope.
In the winter the countryside is still. Josè shows us the land from the top of the hill: the orchards, the ploughed fields, the beehives and the lake, down in the valley. “We work the land to get some money; we produce honey, jam and oil. We sell these at the end of the meetings we organize in the auditorium, inviting personalities to speak about various themes, current affairs and cultural topics. We get more than 150 people. Then there is the School of Community: “We meet with the people of the area, and then we have a meal together. The auditorium is attached to the kitchens.” As we walk around the village, Berdini tells of the many unexpected and providential fruits produced over the years. Apart from San Michele, a few miles away can be found the complex Le Querce, in Civitanova Alta, with its ceramic workshops and a carpentry workshop for furniture restoration. Also at Civitanova, is the latest addition, Icaro, a hostel for minors, where 9 boys are in care. Nearer, in Corrodonia, is the Don Vincenzo Cappella community, in the Gabbi quarter, where the young people come to start their therapy often sent there by the regional service for drug addiction. Then there is the Santa Regina House at the center of the town.
“Those sent to us are all extreme cases, bordering on inhuman, whom nobody wants,” Josè tells us. It is not just drugs, there are many addictions: alcohol, medicines etc., and often linked to personality disorders. So the people who come here are really in a bad way, without hope. Or almost, because As Josè says, “certainly for some of them it’s difficult to speak of rehabilitation or healing, but they all improve, and a lot.
All possible instruments are used. “Hospitality in these cases must become therapy. So we have teams of doctors and psychologists helping us.” Everything has to be considered, case by case. “Even the requests of the guests. Once very two weeks they can make requests like wanting to go and see parents, or to have more cigarettes, and we discuss these. We don’t leave them alone a moment.” The idea of making a study of a structured method, with doctors, psychiatrists and workers (in a proportion of one for every five patients), was the result of the meeting with the psychiatrist Giuseppe Mammana. He was one of those who, during the 80s, had the idea of the law that permitted the opening of new structures with given criteria. We went to look for him and he gave us a lot of help in drawing up the method, which now is certified at European level. Now he works with us.
The stories of the over 60 guests at the Center are told over lunch, in the “family house.” Almost all of them are there. Giorgio Torresetti and his wife, Silvia, who have three children of their own in Milan for studies and work, and four foster children; Josè Berdini and his wife Lora, with two children. Nicoletta and Stefano, she works in the cooperative, with two Russian sisters they have adopted; then Francesco and Barbara with their children; the parents have just come home from work and the children from school. We eat lunch together, sitting at a large table in a restructured room in the old house. Here, too, there is a music stand, and a violin on a side-table. We had already noticed something of the kind during our tour; the sound of a violin could be heard from one of the rooms, and we saw a grand piano in another. “Here we are all musicians, or almost,” we are told. Lora and Barbara who play the piano and the violin, and Silvia who is the director of the Fermo Conservatory. The three mothers set up a school of music. Then there is Michele, Giorgio’s first born, who is a violinist, and Francesco, guitarist and music therapist. There are many musicians here, even amongst the youngest. “Music is important; it is a passion that all four families have had in common, right from the start.” Nowadays, in the Village, there are frequently small concerts and afternoon rehearsals.

Freedom and community. We continue our tour after lunch. The young people of the community are at work, some collecting olives, others looking after the animals, like Giovanni who is feeding the horses. He’s from Milan. He had a good job in the fashion business, but then came cocaine. He came to Corridonia and is now looking for a house outside the community, though he has also decided to stay on working in the cooperative as a farmer. He also coordinates the work in the fields.
In Josè’s jeep we go to the Gabbi quarter, where the Don Cappella Community is.
A signpost at the entrance announces “Long live the Community,” and on the other side, “Long live freedom.” “It is the detailed experience of communion that regenerates the person and with it his freedom,” Josè explains, “It’s true that some of the kids leave the course, but even those who stay for a short time remember the faces they have met and that remind them of the truth of themselves. This is freedom. This is the first place they are sent to. Often they are in a bad way and we accept them. The state funding is very little, only 60 dollars a day. Sadly the basic idea, whatever the political climate, is that they are “chronic,” and that they need to be “locked up.” It’s the philosophy of “damage containment.” It’s not important whether or not they improve.”
Josè stops to talk about Donatella. She had a job, and she has two children. She says she harmed her family by what she did and needs to be forgiven. Rosella is beside her. She was a beautician with two children, 18 and 11 years old. She came to Gabbi from a rehabilitation center. “Where I was before, everyone was left to himself, smoking all day long, between one psychological session and another. They would twist your head all around your problems. Here there is a community that helps you face up to your problems and you live together; everyone needs a community.” In the dining room they are laying the table, some people are sealing jars of honey. Nelson, 25 years old, a very good artist, comes up to Josè. He was arrested for drug abuse, and had been stabbed in the stomach four times by his father. It’s a miracle he is alive. He is talking with Josè about forgiveness. Some days ago, he and Josè read Fr. Giussani’s comment on the Nassiriya massacre. “It’s hard for me. He stabbed me four times.” Then there is Emidio, his head split open after a wild race on the road, with a lot of operations already done and others still to follow. Today he harvested fruit with the others, and this evening he wants to finish reading the biography of Fidel Castro he keeps on his night table. Matteo comes back from work. He has been to see the doctor. His father has been very ill, too. “Are you praying for him?” Berdini asks him. And Matteo replies: “Yes, in my own way.” Josè gets up, “No! Because Jesus has come. We have to follow Him, it’s simpler.” It’s not a place for chronics: this place boils with life and hope.

“Wake up, there’s something new.” It’s evening and we come back to San Michele for supper and a small celebration: Michele and his girlfriend pick up the violins, accompanied by Francesco at the piano. Michele, who found himself here, after all, without wanting it, because of his parents’ choice, tells us, “I am happy with this life, I have accepted it, and I am grateful for it. I had and still have a passion for music, but I realize it’s not everything. These boys are teaching me to live: it’s as if they were saying: ‘There is more to life, wake up.’ It’s something I want to take to everyone. And when I come back here it’s like having my life recharged with meaning.” The patients in care benefit from this life together, too. Josè says, “It helps them to learn a new way of living together, to see a new beauty, like classical music, which is a sign of the truth they are seeking for themselves,” that truth where they can put down roots so as to start over.
The next morning at seven o’clock life begins again. Breakfast, cigarettes (one of those allowed for the day) and then everyone goes off to work. We have to head off, too, and we greet them. We seem to have known Josè and his friends Marco, Pino and the others all our life. And we would almost want to stay here a while with them, to enjoy the beauty of it for a another hour or so, to look again upon hope.