01-06-2011 - Traces, n. 6

IN PRISON FOR
THE FIRST TIME

by Alberto Savorana

Ihad never been in the Padua prison before, despite the insistence of Nicola Boscoletto; after all, I thought that seeing the prisoners at the Rimini Meeting and reading the articles in Traces had already given me a clear picture of the facts. But visiting the "Two Buildings" was something else. I saw firsthand the physical, carnal documentation of the title of the recent Exercises of the Fraternity of CL: "Whoever is in Christ is a new creation." I have seen "old" men (like Nicodemus) and "bad" men (many of them have committed terrible crimes) become children again, changed, with their faces like people captivated by a presence. For the whole day, I felt as if I was in a scene from the Acts of Apostles: what familiarity and concord there was; it's unbelievable–after all, they are still mostly men with life sentences. They took turns to introduce me to a friend I had never met. Then there was the bond with those who have finished their sentence, like Andrea Wu, baptized at the Easter Vigil, who came back to celebrate Bledar's Baptism and the Communion and Confirmation of Umberto and Ludovico. Then again the relationship with the prison guards, who were almost apologetic for the work they were doing in checking and escorting the hundred or so people in the high-security prison. Finally, there was the friendship with Fr. Lucio, Fr. Eugenio, and the others who have been visiting them in prison.
It was surprising for me to see men who have done everything, down to the darkest depths of evil, for whom that very wound was the breach through which something new entered into them, and they felt themselves reborn to a certain hope, full of pain for the victims of their evil. This novelty touched Carlo Castagna, Gemma Calabresi, and Margherita Coletta, surprised by the evidence of a mercy that only the faith makes possible and of which they themselves are witnesses.
In Padua, I saw a piece of an old world made new, from the first glance, as soon as I passed through the great steel door. All around were the prison walls and, in the middle, the botanical garden tended by the gardening school, as if the Lord had taken a piece of dry land and made it flower before our eyes. Most of all, though, it was a surprise to see Bledar in his white baptismal gown, and in the front row his family who had come from Albania–his father a Muslim and his mother Orthodox–who kept on shaking hands and thanking everyone like those who had found their prodigal son. All schemes, preconceptions, and religious belonging faded into the background.
Then I was struck upon seeing, in the detainees I already knew, the concern for the more than 700 in the prison who are not involved in the Giotto Cooperative founded by Nicola Boscoletto and Andrea Basso. None of them is satisfied to say, "We are working, we have our friends outside... Why should I care about the others?" One of them even asked to share his cell with a young man "who was more in need than all of them." This is the longing that the others, too, might encounter what they have seen and heard.
Finally, Fr. Carrón and Fr. Giussani… familiar names that recurred throughout the day, to remind us temporary guests of the root of that strangeness that makes the detainees speak of Jesus, of faith, of friendship, and of forgiveness.
My only regret was not meeting a person I have known for years by correspondence; the day before, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, he was allowed to go home under house arrest. He says it is a miracle of his "guardian Giussani," as he calls him, who prays for him day and night. Lucky man!