Notes from the Great Trip

Ten years after his death, we offer these travel notes, written by Father Francesco Ricci in the 1980s. Found by chance among his papers, they might have been written for publication

by Francesco Ricci

Yugoslavia
It all began in the summer of ’65 in Podpec, a town of four houses thrown helter-skelter on the other side of the railroad tracks just before coming into Ljubljana. We were in a makeshift camp on the edge of a pond crouching beneath the steep bank that gives the place its name. The first socialist mosquitoes were an unpleasant surprise, and not the only one in this land that was still unknown to us.
Luckily, one of the houses was set up as a “gostilna,” and the inn was famous in Ljubljana and the area around for its cooking. With good peasant grace, they would serve marinated trout and roast meat, with a strong Merlot which would make you forget about the mosquitoes and socialism for a while. And at the end, the flowing Slivovitz would invite songs and sleep.
It was around here that we met the legendary “Father Vinko,” a young country curate who smelled like sheep’s milk cheese. Our encounter came about in a clearing on the edge of a wood. I still remember Robi standing guard with the others to make sure that indiscreet eyes and ears did not disturb our dialogue. There was always a Fiat 600 of the Milicija on patrol at the crossroads from Podpec toward Ljubljana.
We spoke with our voices low and our hearts running free, discovering what a lively faith existed in the people who lived in those valleys of Slovenia. They seemed to us like shipwreck survivors, soaking wet and victorious.
Today, Father Vinko gathers together hundreds of young people from these same harsh and gentle Slovenian valleys, youths who are united in an experience of faith and friendship, the surest hope for this country teetering on the edge between West and East and suffering all the ills of the two major systems–capitalism and socialism–that meet here. Twenty years have gone by, and Vinko’s hair is gray, but “Ziva Cirkev” (“Living Church”) is a movement that has renewed the presence of the Church in a society that had given her up for dead.

Czechoslovakia
When I went down the stairs of the basement of a gray government building on an anonymous street in the Golden City, the person who opened the door for me had a wide, happy face with two unusually lively, bright little eyes. He was wearing the almond-colored official smock of the storerooms of the National Art Museum.
He spoke elegant Italian, but more than speaking it, he squeaked it, or sang it in a lilting voice. All around were pictures, frames, and the usual objects you find in the storerooms of a museum. As soon as he found out that I was Italian, born in Faenza, he showed me one of the pictures, set up prominently on an easel, and assured me that this was the most beautiful one he had, a very sweet Virgin and Child, in the purest Renaissance style in terms of color and form. Later he gave me a photograph of it, which I preserve as a very special souvenir.
He had been in the job for only a short time, even though he had studied art history at the Sorbonne, no less. But there was no reason to be shocked that, with his education, he was not director of the museum. He was there doing forced labor as a substitute for finishing in prison his 16-year sentence, a large part of which he had already served, after being convicted in 1950–along with many others–for being a “Vatican spy.” His name was Jozef Zverina. In 1968 he gave a Christian overtone to the “Prague Spring.” In 1977 he was one of the first to sign the “Charta 77.” Since then, he has been for us a master of faith and culture.

Poland
The train running through the night on New Year’s Eve 1965 from Katowice to Warsaw was packed with people. My traveling companion and I had found places in a compartment that was already full. The Polish passengers, as soon as they found out we were Italian, welcomed us warmly, like old friends. We couldn’t speak a word, but we told each other many things, in an atmosphere that became merrier and merrier as midnight approached. When the train whistle marked the start of a new year, each one offered the others whatever he had: we, I remember with embarrassment, had a bottle of vodka, and a girl sitting next to the window passed round an orange cut carefully into eight slices, maybe the only orange she had that whole winter.
It happened that in the euphoria of celebrating, we absent-mindedly missed our stop at Czestochowa, where we were supposed to get off for our pilgrimage to Jasna Gòra. The ticket checker came by and wanted to make us pay the difference in price to the next station, but the Poles defended us, determined not to let him do it, and indeed persuaded him to take care of us. He turned us over to the station master, asking him to keep us warm. We waited hours for the first train going back, and so we reached the holy place of the Polish nation for the first Mass of the first day of their Millennium.
For the first time I saw those very gentle and very sad eyes of the Mother of grief and hope. Outside, the cold of the night wrapped the earth, but Poland was there, on her knees in prayer, and already was nurturing in the womb of her destiny the son whom the Holy Spirit was going to choose as the Father and Shepherd of the universal Church. We prayed too, in trembling humility, letting ourselves be embraced by the very real unreality of that new morning. The perception was very clear inside us that in that place the mystery of the salvation of nations was brewing.

Argentina
We reached the gates of San Miguel de Tucuman in our Fiat 600. I had been crouched inside it for almost 3,200 miles, from Buenos Aires by way of Rosario, Santa Fé, and the very poor province of Santiago dell’Estero. These were the years of guerilla warfare: Tupamaros and Montoneros were tearing each other apart in the impossible revolt that was put down with unheard-of violence by the military regime. Tucuman is the emblematic site of national independence, and the guerillas tried again and again to conquer it in order to make it the first capital of liberated Argentina.
We were stopped at a checkpoint. The scene reminded me of the war years in Italy: heavy machine guns, lighter machine guns sticking out of the sentry boxes, the severe faces of the military police. An official checked our papers, passports, and driver licenses. When he realized that my companion, who was driving, was a religious, he kneeled down and stuck his face in the window, and suddenly changing his tone to something somewhere between complicity and wheedling, pulled a ticket out of his jacket pocket and said, “Father, would you like to buy a lottery ticket?”
We bought two, and he seemed happy. The ticket promised some prize to participants in the lottery in favor of the police hospital. I didn’t remember anything of the sort ever happening with the SS. I asked myself: where is Argentina going?
Argentina went much farther along on the road of violence and terror, but then it emerged into the green fields of democracy. I see the signs of this on the streets of Buenos Aires–some good, others bad. I wonder: will this too end up in a lottery? In the sanctuary of Lujan, where the Virgin protects the destiny of this noble nation, I perceive the answer: hope is placed in young faith. There are many young people here who await a new encounter with Christ.

Africa
We were stopped fourteen times, seven on the way there and seven on the way back, along the road from Tororo to Gulu. We had had to land in Nairobi and traverse Kenya to get into Uganda, because of the war that was still going on even after the fall of the bloody dictator Idi Amin. The war left behind it the signs of its crucial passage: semi-destroyed towns and villages everywhere, the carcasses of armored cars along the roads, and fear and hunger in the eyes of the people. The enchantment of this beautiful land seemed trampled and raped by a mad fury. Hate and revenge had the black wings of vultures.
At the thirteenth roadblock, the usual patrol made up of soldiers carrying weapons bigger than themselves stopped our van and set to inspecting it with wild arrogance. I had some book in my hand, I don’t remember what, and the black who was checking me started thumbing through it. Finding a colored image–a prayer card, probably–he told me he wanted it. The barrel of the gun hanging off his shoulder was stronger than any argument. I said I was happy to give it to him, as a sign of friendship and a souvenir.
I then saw him pull out of the pocket of the camouflage fatigues he was sporting a handful of banknotes. He pulled out two or three Italian thousand-lire notes–who knows how and in what raid they fell into his hands. He ordered me to take them, with an authoritarian and at the same time playful tone. Thus I found myself doing “magendo” (a black market transaction) in the very midst of the war.
From where will peace come for Uganda? Years have gone by, and that war has not yet ceased bloodying the land and the hearts of the people. But there is a sign of hope in the rebirth of communion among the men and women of Uganda. Francis, the martyr Francis, is the first flower of this rebirth, and the most beautiful.

Chile
At noon the spring sunshine warms the broad “avenidas” of the center of town. The people walk quickly, or pause, or go in and out of shops, repeating the gestures of every day. Everything seems normal, even the patrol vans of the “carabineros” and the hydrant parked strategically in front of the national university.
In the evening, the atmosphere is different, not as calm, tense. Downtown, the people walk faster, the shops close early, there are more patrol vans, the hydrants start their motors. Rumors of skirmishes and death arrive from the outskirts of the city.
At night, when the curfew is already in force and every trace of human presence has disappeared, the crackle of gunfire begins and the number of dead rises. That helicopter up above may be counting them.
This could be the chronicle of one of the days of protest marking the new civilian calendar of this suffering land of Chile. But who writes the chronicle of the days of hope which somebody somewhere in this country is living? In the hotels the foreign correspondents of the Western press churn out forecasts of the general’s imminent end, constantly postponed sine die. But somebody, somewhere, is watering the slender stalk of green hope with the tears of grief and lighting it with faith. I know these people, these custodians of Chilean hope. Their names are written in heaven; you will never read them in the pages of your favorite daily newspaper, you will never hear them pronounced by your TV newscaster.
I know them, the young sprouts of Chilean hope; today’s violence tramples underfoot the sap of their human dignity and seems to squash it, but yesterday’s roots are alive and deep, and they are already preparing tomorrow’s fruit. They are oak sprouts–the storm can only make them stronger.

Brazil
The night flight from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo is preparing for landing. My nose glued to the window, I look out. Below, the earth is in darkness, but already the first lights of the city are beginning to appear. From up here, the fast speed of the airplane seems slow. The lights draw near, multiply, get longer, spread out, tangle, and dilate to an enormous width. The city is now a blinding monster. The airplane window frames only a small section, and the bewildered gaze hangs onto every dazzling stream that seems to well up from the earth’s very innards.
What life illumines this sea of artificial light? Millions of lights are shining on millions of lives. Useful and useless lives, happy and unhappy, sick and healthy, blessed and cursed, holy and damned, new and ending, cherished and humiliated… the megalopolis at night, which reveals the enigma of life and conceals its mystery…
While the flight attendant repeats the usual instructions to fasten seat belts, put seat backs in an upright position, and refrain from smoking, I search out in the immense maze of the streets–where the mad appearance of the life of the huge monster runs like liquid ice–the little houses where the Other Light of faith is shining: the house of Vando and João Carlos, of Susie and Marina, of Bené and Yvonne, of Teresa and Jaire–the houses of the Friends of True Life. Am I under an illusion? Perhaps, when I touch ground, I too will fall into the liquid ice of loneliness where man is a stranger to himself, and the other is his enemy or adversary.
Passport control. The policeman stamps the documents with the same gesture of the health official on the meat of slaughtered animals. The customs officer pretends to look for something inside the suitcases. The porters would carry even your soul for you if you let them. Outside, people are waiting. Eyes are peeled to recognize their arriving loved ones. I too see you, my friends, I embrace you, drink in your smiles all in one gulp. You have a face of flesh, you are the very human sign of Him who gave His life for us. You are His presence, for me and for the world.

Post script: I wrote not for the pleasure of reminiscing but because God has chosen to save us through faces and places, and laughter and sneers.