Lords over life?

A Response of Civilization
A trip to the Little Home of Divine Providence, founded in 1800 by Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo, to host the mentally ill and the disabled. A citadel of charity that has one single reason for being: Christ. An example of true progress in the dark night of barbarism

by Primo Soldi

A morning spent with Fr. Carmine Arice is like being taken by the hand and led through the heart of the colossal work of charity, the Cottolengo Home in Turin. “This run with you through these 270,000 square feet [the size of the Little Home of Divine Providence today] is also a way of thanking Fr. Giussani.” Charisms create affinities in history, said John Paul II. Passing through the courtyards and the pavilions that form this “citadel of charity,” you meet faces full of gladness, both those we now call “challenged”–previously, “handicapped”–and those of the sisters who care for them with unbounded love, rooted in the only reason: Christ. Fr. Carmine tells us, “Once, thousands of sheets were washed by hand and, in fact, Fr. Cottolengo founded a religious family just for this service, the Sisters of Saint Martha. One day, a visitor passing through saw a sister wringing out the wash and said, ‘Sister, I wouldn’t do that job for all the gold in the world.’ ‘Me neither,’ responded the sister, smiling, ‘In fact, I only do it for the love of God.’”

The “good daughters”
Today, over two thousand Cottolengo Sisters draw from the Laus Perennis (perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, begun by Cottolengo himself), the strength inherent in their vocation, serving and loving Christ in those who otherwise would meet the same end as Terri Schiavo.
“Not since the times of the Third Reich has an innocent handicapped person been put to death,” declared Il Foglio, the Italian newspaper edited by Giuliano Ferrara. Unfortunately, in our pagan and progressive world, this happens. Instead, at the Cottolengo Home in Turin there is the Family of the Holy Innocents, where weak and mentally ill women are cared for, those Fr. Cottolengo called “good daughters.” This response of civilization, of true authentic progress out of the dark night of barbarism to which we have regressed, this miracle of humanity, has only one explanation and only one form of life: the holiness of a priest who created the Little Home whose law of life was only that of Charity. This man is Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo (1786-1842). Writing to the King in March 1837 about himself and his work, “… in the Little Home I always viewed myself as a pure nothing, and nothing was done there for me Soli Deo Honor, et gloria, and the charity of the benefactors…” In the Little Home entrance, the words “Charitas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14) stand out, Saint Paul’s words that so struck Fr. Cottolengo that he chose them as the motto of his work. Today, there are hundreds of Little Homes throughout the world, from Italy to Florida, from Kenya to India, from Tanzania to Ecuador. All this was born from the heart of a humble, simple, and cheerful priest who always tried to understand God’s will for him, letting himself be guided by Divine Providence.

Overwhelming encounter
Born in Bra (Cuneo) in 1786, three years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Cottolengo was a contemporary of the saintly Curate of Ars and foremost among the ranks of those who would make Turin in the 1800s the capital of saints.
While canon of the Church of Corpus Domini in Turin, he was going through a spiritual crisis. “He was usually so cheerful,” Fr. Carmine tells us, “but he became strangely taciturn, such that his brother priest gave him the life of Saint Vincent de Paul, telling him, “Read it, and at least we’ll have something to discuss at table.” But the Lord was preparing him for an encounter that would turn his life upside down. On September 2, 1827, Fr. Cottolengo was called to bring the last Sacraments to Giovanna Gonnet, a woman who, journeying from Milan to Leon, had stopped in a miserable shack in Turin not far from the Church of Corpus Domini. Mother of five children and six months pregnant with her next child, she had been struck by an infectious disease and refused by two Turin hospitals. In that squalid hovel her daughter was taken from her womb, still alive, but Giovanna died, in atrocious pain. Canon Cottolengo was so shaken by that death that he ran to pray before the image of Our Lady of Graces; with his heart in tumult he ordered the sacristan to ring the bells. The people began to run to the church; the canon recited the litanies of the Virgin and, at the end, exclaimed, “The grace has been done, the grace has been done! Blessed be Our Lady!” telling those present about his idea for founding the Little Home of Divine Providence under the protection of Saint Vincent de Paul. The Work was born. Quite soon, a group of women, beginning with the mother, Marianna Nasi, joined him in taking care of the poor infirm who were not accepted in the Turin hospitals. They were simple volunteer laywomen, the first nucleus of those who would become the immense family of the Sisters of Cottolengo. Subsequently, he founded the lay religious Brothers, and then the Congregation of Priests of the Most Blessed Trinity. Fr. Cottolengo felt that he was being helped in his studies by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and wanted to dedicate a seminary to him for the formation of priests available for the dioceses, for missions, and for the Little Home.

Religious and volunteers
Fundamental to Fr. Cottolengo’s charism was the idea of calling his work a “Family,” a “Home,” with the request to live together under the same roof. Canonization proceedings are underway for the Venerable Monsignor Francesco Paleari, and for Brother Luigi Bordini, who participated in the Russian campaign and risked death in a Kazakhstan lager. He dedicated his entire life to the sick as a sign of his gratitude to the One who had saved him. Few know that inside the Little Home in Turin there is a monastery of sisters dedicated to the contemplative life, or that there are others in Cavoretto, Pralormo, and Biella; in Piedmont, one in Manziana in the Rome province, and one in Toro, Africa, with a growing number of vocations. Of the three thousand people who daily live in the Little Home in Turin, many are religious men and women, lay brothers and volunteers who care for the sick to the point of welcoming those who would have no other chance of being welcomed: the “idiots” and the “half-wits” who Fr. Cottolengo called “good sons” and “good daughters.” Raising them up out of their state of discouragement and humiliation, he gave them–and today the religious brothers and sisters, and the volunteers of Cottolengo give them–particular demonstrations of attention and affection. In opening this new Family, the saint was certain that he was applying the words of Christ: “Insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.” (Mt 25:40). He considered the most pitiful cases as “God’s promissory notes to be exchanged at the bank of Divine Providence.” Fr. Carmine told us a curious characteristic of his founder, which is that he never knew how much money he had, nor how many patients there were in the Little Home.

Divine Providence’s
manual laborer
Fr. Cottolengo considered himself Divine Providence’s “manual laborer,” attentive to everything and everyone, simple, joyful, affable, grounded in reality, tried and tested in every way by the political, social, and also ecclesiastical environment of his times.
John Paul II visited the Cottolengo Home on April 13, 1980. On September 2, 2002, 175 years from the fact that caused the upheaval in the Saint’s life, the Pope wrote a letter in which he recalled that if the supernatural dimension of the Cottolengo Home were to disappear, it would cease to exist. A work of pure, simple philanthropy could not continue over time. “Only Christianity,” says Fr. Carmine, “recognizes that the human person has dignity from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. We love to tell everyone what Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say–let them be born, and then give them to us. Fr. Cottolengo served man in his body, but much dearer to his heart was man’s soul. Every day, he gathered the street people and, before giving them bread and soup, he announced the Gospel to them. Even today, we provide 500 free meals a day to street people.” Time has flown, and our run through the pavilions and courtyards has ended, because Fr. Carmine has other urgent commitments awaiting him. He is a happy man, happy to belong entirely to his father founder, to belong entirely to Christ, and to be the friend of all those sons and daughters made good by the arms of fathers and mothers who love them for only one exclusive reason: because, first of all, they are loved by Christ. Fr. Cottolengo loved them so much that today in the world his name is synonymous with physical or mental human limitation. But Cottolengo isn’t an institution: it’s him, the simple priest consumed by the Charity of Christ.

TAKE HEART!
From John Paul II’s talk during his visit to the Cottolengo Home.
Turin, April 13, 1980
Love is the explanation for everything, a love that opens up to the other in his unique individuality and speaks to him the decisive words, “I want you to exist.” If you don’t start from this acceptance of the other, however he presents himself, recognizing in him a true–though often blurred–image of Christ, then you can’t say you truly love.
No discrimination, then. The parable of the “Good Samaritan” is meaningful, and Fr. Cottolengo commented on it with his life. Like a good “manual laborer of Providence,” as he called himself, he did not lay out preconceived plans, but sought to correspond time after time to what the circumstances “by chance” proposed to him (see Lk 10:31). The result is this grandiose work.
Man’s life in history, polluted by sin, develops under the sign of the Cross of Christ. In the Cross, God overturned the meaning of suffering. Fruit of and testimony to sin, it has now become participation in the redemptive expiation wrought by Christ. As such, already now it heralds the definitive victory over sin and its consequences, through participation in the glorious Resurrection of the Savior.
In the light of the risen Christ, I turn to the infirm guests of this home, and in them to all those who bear on their shoulders the heavy cross of suffering. Dearest brothers and sisters, take heart! You have an exalted work to do: you are called to “make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His body, the Church” (see Col 1:24).
In you, Christ prolongs His redemptive passion. With Him, if you so desire, you can save the world!