The father of Caritas turns 90

On July the 2nd 1971, cardinal Poma, the president of Cei (Italian Episcopal Conference), signed the decree that marked the foundation of Caritas in Italy and gave Nervo the task of turning the idea into reality. It would then be up to the individual parishes to set up Caritas locally.

Who handed down the value of charity to you?

My family. I was born a refugee in Lombardy, in December 1918 and thirteen days after my birth my father died of Spanish flu. My mother was 27 years old, my sister 4. I thank God that this experience gave me the chance to get to know the reality of the life of poor people from the inside. Throughout the whole of my life I have felt indebted to them for this precious lesson.

What are the founding principles of Caritas?
First of all: charity. Charity is always relevant, as a stimulus for and complement to justice. Then there is Caritas’ pedagogical function, which we have followed without loosing sight of our faith. The Church belongs to God and is guided by his spirit. Our role has always been to answer the messages sent to us by God through reality. It was not us who laid out the program, what we did was program the answers to the best we could.

And what have these “messages” been?
There have been many messages and Caritas has always worked in an attempt to answer God’s messages. The first came through the earthquake in the north of Italy in 1976. That summer saw about ten thousand volunteers flock to help the victims. We proposed that all parishes and parish Caritas’ take charge of the most damaged villages and commit to taking care of them for at least three years. This caused villages and parishes across Italy to twin with each other and resulted in a powerful experience of human and ecclesiastical communion.

A similar message came from the earthquake in the South of Italy in 1980. It was a concrete way to overcome the gap between North and South of Italy and develop cooperation Unfortunately it didn’t become permanent. Then another unexpected message came.

What was it?
We came into contact with “the boat people”, Vietnamese refugees who were trying to escape from their nation’s communist regime, seeking to be accepted by any country that would receive them.

How did you come into contact with them?
During a short visit to Malaysia in 1980 we found out that it had already received seventy thousand Vietnamese refugees, but having received no help from Western countries it was forced to drive thousands back to sea, as happens today in Sicily. We learnt that all religious authorities – Catholic,
Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu – had signed an appeal to worshippers all over the world to lobby their governments to accept Vietnamese refugees.

What did you do?
The Italian government resisted our pressures for five months, then at last, as the elections approached, it gave in, but on condition that we were able to guarantee both houses and jobs to the refugees we brought to Italy. Probably they thought we wouldn’t be able to meet their conditions. They were wrong – we launched an appeal to all parishes and to diocesan Caritas. In the end we found houses and jobs for ten thousand families. It was a very demanding experience of welcome, because we had to go, together with embassies in refugee camps in Malaysia and Thailand, to identify which families to bring to Italy and we also had to find translators, Vietnamese religious authorities and finally we had to place families in reception centres to teach them the language and our habits. In the end the government’s administrative obstructionism only allowed us to receive three thousand families. But it was a wonderful welcome experience. Maybe fate was preparing us for the present day phenomenon of immigration.

Conscientious objectors played an important role during that period. What contribution did they  make?

They were another “message” coming from reality. Caritas’ convention brought together more than one hundred thousand young people who introduced Caritas’ “prevailing pedagogical function”, that is to say the issue of non violence, the rejection of war, as well as bringing new and fresh energies to the diocesan Caritas. And we mustn’t forget the voluntary sector. In autumn 1975 we organized, in Naples, the first national conference of the voluntary sector.

What were the most important “battles” you have had to face?
The term “battle” assumes that there is an enemy; we didn’t consider anyone an enemy and I think that no one considered us enemies either; I would rather say that Caritas found sensibility and welcome also in worlds that are not close to the Church. It’s better to talk then of resistance: maybe we found the greatest resistance against our conscientious objectors. At first there was resistance also inside the catholic world, which was then overcome. We had difficulties with the Minister of Defence, who often considered conscientious objectors “legalized deserters”. But Caritas found a deeper difficulty inside the Church, passing from the organization and service supply to the activation of the whole community. And maybe this is also the problem today.

Is there any space for gratuity in today’s world?
This is the big problem of the voluntary sector, whose core identity is gratuity. The voluntary sector can be seen as a low cost social safety valve to relieve the tensions deriving from excessive social inequalities as well as a good source of votes for the elections. If this were the truth, then the voluntary sector would be dead already. The voluntary sector will only have a strong future perspective if it is able to make the choice to protect poor people, to defend the outcasts.

Can we find the meaning of citizenship once again?
Yes. By knowing and living the Republican Constitution, that guarantees man’s inviolable rights, recognizes that all citizens have equal social dignity and says that everyone must contribute “to society’s material and spiritual progress”. Isn’t this the authentic meaning of citizenship?