Turin (Italy). The Educating Community of Vides Main in Turin, raised at the school of Sister Angela Cardani, Daughter of Mary Help of Christians of the Piedmont Province of Mary Help of Christians (IPI), remembers her one year after her death.
In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, the intuition of Sister Angela who, in 1990, in the Vallette district in the North West suburb of Turin, gave life to Vides Main to share – together with the FMA Community and volunteers – the life of the people of the poorer neighborhoods and bring hope, remains relevant:
“Our home is where the poor are”, how many times in these months of pandemic have we heard this phrase resound within us that we consider one of the key points of your spiritual testament. (…) A year ago, on 27 October 2019, almost on tiptoe, you went to heaven to meet your Lord. In the immediate future, however, the conviction that you would not leave us alone to continue your dream, that living in the house of the poor would have seen you by our side, as you would have been in walking the streets of this periphery, to bring the voice of those who struggle to make themselves heard. And it really happened. We felt you were our traveling companion in reaching with our mobile unit filled with food, the families in most need , in the gestures of solidarity that many wanted to make to remember what you had taught them, in the multiplication of projects that have obtained the support of Foundations, but above all, we have found you in the words of your young people and your people, the ones with which you rekindled hope so many times.”
VIDES Main, supported by the FMA of Bl. Laura Vicuña Community, is a voluntary association recognized as an ONLUS, which carries out projects of educational and scholastic support, animation for free time, social integration for children, young people, and families according to Salesian values, in collaboration with local institutions. A ‘multi-handed’ project, as she herself recognized:
“I feel that the little piece of history built in Vallette was written by many hands: by the God of life above all, by our Congregation that allowed us to live this singular experience, by educators, by volunteers who share the same educational passion, by families who trusted us and, certainly not least, by the Institutions.”
Looking at young people with the eyes of her heart, Sister Angela was able to grasp the potential to make it evolve, the relationships to be addressed, the attitudes to be discovered, as recalled by one of the first girls of the “La Finestrella” Center (The Little Window) today a mother: “She looked into our eyes, she put us in her heart, and then with each of us she made a plan, she asked us for a commitment, she helped us to dream.”
