Italy
after the earthquake

The Budding of Hope
The news of  the earthquake in Abruzzo went around the world, but not everyone has heard what is happening within the experiences of death and homelessness. We went to see, and found faces and stories of a people  already starting anew, from the Church, the Pope’s visit, and the “flower that buds from faith.”

by Paolo Perego

It’s a gorgeous day. The sun is already hot and it’s eleven in the morning. At night, the thermometer drops again toward 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Daniela returns up the street with a basketful of clothes that she’d rinsed a bit further down the way, where a little fountain gushes. Behind her, Carmine and Daniele, university students from Teramo, are carrying two water containers full to overflowing–they want to help water the flowers in Daniela’s garden. The spring buds were dying because since the night of April 6th they hadn’t been watered. Only a few days have passed, and Daniela says the noise of those 22 seconds when the earth overturned a city still echoes in her ears. The tragedy of the quake is well  known; the international press spread the news throughout  the world of a city completely destroyed and of the loss of 297 victims.
Daniela is from Milan, and her husband, Marco Gentile, is a chemist for a local pharmaceutical firm. They have three children, the oldest of whom is studying in America. They’re CL members, and have lived in Aquila for fifteen years. Their new townhouse in Sant’Elia is three miles from the city, a ten-minute drive from what was the city center, now no longer.
For days, the front-page reports on the earthquake showed the rubble and worn faces, and told of so many things–the  dead; the 1,500 wounded; the tens of thousands homeless, living in the tent cities or the Teramo coast hotels and homes. And yet, there’s something that few have recounted, a tide of facts, stories with a common denominator, as Marco says, “an unthinkable hope, generated by a correspondence that happens even in the midst of difficulty, that encompasses everything”–pain, worry, fear, and gladness. This is something from another world, born of the faith, the certainty in which this hope is rooted.
This faith comes to mind when you arrive here. On the main road of Sant’Elia, there’s a camper that Piero, Marco’s brother-in-law, brought from Milan so Marco and Daniela could stay close to their damaged home. The townhouse has only a few cracks here and there, but the quakes continue and even though the fire fighters say that it isn’t dangerous, they’re still very fearful. With difficulty, moving cautiously, Daniela opens the door to her house. “We were lucky…” she says as she shows the kitchen, in pieces, walking on a carpet of broken dishes and fallen masonry. Just think, here, the earthquake was less destructive: just a few collapsed buildings and a few homes unfit for use. “Let’s leave now; I’m scared.” We return to the camper. Next to it is another, that of their neighbors–this, too, a “loan”: after Piero’s initiative, Marco and their friends from the Companionship of Works of Abruzzo thought that it would be useful to obtain some campers so Aquilans could stay close to their homes while they are being made habitable again. No sooner said than done. The neighbor’s camper was brought by Cristiano, from Tolentino, who’d bought it last year. “I’m leaving you with a piece of my heart,” he said to Marco’s neighbor, reaching out to give him the keys. The neighbor was moved, and joked, “It’s not possible. Only Christ does things gratuitously.” “Christ, exactly,” Cristiano smiled at him in response.

Looking for each others. We have an appointment to meet Marco for lunch in a shopping center that has already re-opened. The shops are open–empty, but open. He’s sitting at a table in front of a pizza, one leg outside the chair. “If you feel vibrations, start running. You’ve got to get out fast,” Marco says, before getting into our conversation. His face is tired. He’s begun working again at his firm–but not his regular work, because the structure has to be brought back to operational status. There’s so much to do to help all the people who’ve lost everything, from his dearest friends to mere acquaintances, and others. “The first concern, after realizing that all our family members were alive, was to look for all our friends. Nobody was missing; everyone was okay.”
Once again in Sant’Elia, where the heart of the CL Movement in the city is now that ever-open camper, with a plastic table outside, a knot of adults and university students has stopped to talk, laugh, and tell their stories. Gino, a doctor, shows up, tanned like many others who are forced to work in the open because of the continual quakes. His house in the city can be repaired, but now he has to do the paperwork to stop the loan payments. His wife Grazia and their two children, Paolo and Maria, are in Termoli. He stayed on, in a camper with his parents. “They were days that we expected. We had an escape plan in case of an emergency. That night, Maria, almost a year old, was crying because she was teething, so Grazia brought her to bed with us, which we never do. We got out, and the next morning, going back inside to get some personal effects, we saw her crib covered in debris.” Today, they have many concerns, and Gino and Daniela list them as we drive to their home in Onna: the house, their children’s school, work... But the more you expect a manifestation of desperation, the more you discover that you’ll never see it. There isn’t pride or rebellion in reaction to what happened; not even anger. You notice this in the other people you meet. The question they bear inside isn’t about why this happened, but about how to stay before it and live it. Walking along the streets, wandering through the tent cities, priests and nuns never hear people yell at them, asking how God could permit this. Fr. Luigi expected people to react this way. “I was almost afraid to go around dressed like a priest. Instead, people would come up to me, looking for me. The people of Aquila immediately sought their priests, their Church. The Abruzzan people have a deeply rooted faith.”

“Can I take off your jacket?” Grazia, Gino’s wife and a teacher, recounts, “My son is three years old, and now we’re staying in Termoli with my parents. One day, my son ran up to his grandfather, who’d just come in, and asked, ‘Can I take off your jacket? Can I turn the pages of your newspaper?’ Well, he has a clearer conception than I do of what it means to stay in front of reality. The problem is to serve Christ in the form He chooses for you. You see it in your day, in the small and big things. You have to look at what you have in front of you, and now, the only thing left to us is this ‘yes’ that we can say to what has happened.” Hers aren’t just words, when you see Onna razed to the ground; here there’s nothing to do, you think, but no, the Church is still on her feet. Not the physical church, made of bricks, of course–that is crumbled to bits like the rest of the town. Fr. Cesare, the parish priest, says Mass in the tent. He’s very engaged with people to visit, with things to do. Something similar is happening in Sant’Elia and in the tent city where, even before the showers arrived, a big wooden cross was erected in the center of the field, with benches around it.
We go back into the camper, where Matteo and Graziella have arrived, their two little ones, Giovanni and Andrea, asleep in the carseats of their car parked nearby. Marco arrives with his friend Paolo. They have to decide with Tonino and Pasquale of the Pescara Companionship of Works where to put the container that will arrive tomorrow, to create a help center for area firms. They’ll be aided by some university students from the CLU group, who will soon be engaged in after-school assistance in the tent city, working in shifts. Serving Christ there where He calls. “A friend who came to visit us said this,” said Marco, while we had dinner with Daniela in the Sant’Elia tent city. “The earthquake wiped out not only things, but above all the idea that God is just a thought. Today, the most urgent problem is to acknowledge His presence. This counts.” And you see it, because this is a glad people, like Bishop Giuseppe Molinari, whom we met with Marco for an interview. You realize immediately that instead of asking questions, you just have to look at him. Three hundred dead–three hundred of his children. The bishop was miraculously spared when his bedroom collapsed, because he’d felt ill and gotten up out of bed. He is 71 years old, and this is his land, his people. “Your Excellency, where should people begin to start again?” “From Christ,” he said, bringing his hand to the cross on his chest.

The embrace of a father. “He’s a real father, ” Marco said as we went back. The same was said of the Pope after his April 28th visit: a great paternity. Stefano, one of the 12 university students who met Benedict XVI in front of the Student’s House, where many of their classmates died, said the same of him: “He didn’t make any promises, or give us pat discourses. He was interested in us, and stayed with us, asking each of us, ‘What do you study? What do you do?’ He hugged us.”
This embrace is also seen in the solidarity of the people living on the Abruzzo coast, who welcomed over 20,000 homeless Aquilans from Giulianova and Francavilla.
And it is seen in so many people who got right to work, from civil protection workers, hosted in Giulianova in the Teramo Province Service Center for Volunteer Work, to high school students; in works of mercy, associations, fan clubs of local teams, not-for-profits of all shapes and sizes, and, in their midst, over 20,000 people of every age and background who moved spontaneously, almost one for every earthquake victim, if you stop to do the math. “It’s as if a people has miraculously re-flowered, above all in the evidence of what is essential, of what truly lies at the heart and meaning of everything. It’s a small bud that represents a great newness, come up through the rubble,” comments Marco Gentile at the end of the barbeque in Teramo, an occasion for many CL members of Aquila to see each other again after that night. The children hug each other, tell each other again about that monster that lifted up their house and shook it. Each one has his own story to tell. They sing together: “Our heart hasn’t gotten lost. Your people isn’t afraid of death, life, the present, or the future. Your rock is safe.” It sends a chill through me, for it’s undeniably true, just listening to this people, just looking at it gathered together, without frills. Here lies hope, in these faces–a hope for everyone, even for those who lost everything, perhaps even a child. Lucilla speaks of a student of hers, Filippo, one of those who asked questions, who provoked, one of those who died in the earthquake. At his funeral, she approached his mother and told her about his questions, telling her too that the 8,000 GS students at the Easter Triduum in Rimini would be praying for him. His mother threw herself on Lucilla. “She said, crying, ‘I won’t leave you,’” continued Lucilla. “But she wasn’t saying it to me. She was saying it to Christ.”