Pope Francis: Miserando atque eligendo

I feel deep sorrow in writing these few lines in memory of Pope Francis, An intensely powerful emotion that one feels when a beloved friend, whom you have always cared for deeply, is lost.

The Pope who came from the end of the world, and who lived this world firsthand with the least among us, has bid us farewell. He did so discreetly, without long waits and without too much clamor. A death that occurred the day after Easter, the day after once again seeing and embracing his people.

I too was there that March night in 2013, among the crowd of people in St. Peter's Square, all excited at the sight of the white smoke and all enthusiastic about the first Latin Pope in the history of the Church, upon whom hopes for the reform of a Church adrift were immediately placed.

Already in the choice of his name, the path he would take and with what weapons he would face it was visible, Francis, like the patron saint of Italy, the poor saint from Assisi, and he honored that name to the end.

His last visit was to the Regina Coeli prison on his last Holy Thursday, where about seventy inmates of different languages and colors awaited him. "This year I liked coming to prison to do as Jesus did, it is not possible for me to perform the washing of feet, but I can and want to be close to you. I pray for you and for your families," he told the inmates. He never shied away from the pain of those living in extreme and brutal conditions.

Pope Francis's first official visit was to Lampedusa, the southernmost border of Italy, in July 2013, where desperate men arrive on makeshift boats, when they do not perish in the crossing, only to realize that they are not welcome here.

In his first and last outing as Pope lies the entire meaning of his pontificate: always standing on the side of the least, not only with words but also and especially with example.

He was loved by many, by believers, by laypeople, as well as by atheists, who saw in him, first and foremost, the depth of the man, fascinated by his rectitude, his humility, and his courage. In a world dominated by opportunism, arrogance, and bullying, he left us a clear message: never be afraid to raise your voice against abuses and injustices. He loved to repeat that there is only one moment in life when it is permissible to look down on others, when you help them to get up.

At Pope Francis's funeral were present powerful figures and heads of state. But I like to think that, ideally, migrants, the poor, the homeless, inmates, the least of the earth whom no one ever deems worthy of attention, whom he instead always cared for, were there from around the world to bid Pope Francis farewell.

Buon viaggio Francesco

A dream in my heart

The first time I was in Naples I was 7 years old, I still remember that encounter.
Together with my grandparents, I came from a visit to the excavations of Pompei, it was early October, the air was calm and pleasant and the sound of seagulls, for months, inhabited my dreams, usually full of mountain silences.

The sea as blue as the sky, the sleeping giant dominating the gulf, the thousands of colours of a surprising city, a feast for the eyes of a child full of curiosity.

We got off at the Garibaldi station and from there crossing Forcella we headed towards the historic center, the buzz of life was something magical for me, I've always been used to a slightly slower pace and less crowded places.

Children in the street playing with Super Santos (a ball), with two stones as football goals, there was a life made of dreams, the same dreams I shared and my own passion for that game called football.

And it is precisely that passion that today unites all the Italian sportsmen and from all over the world in a choral and heartfelt applause for the deeds of the Neapolitan Azzurri.

But, even more than the team, it is the city of Naples with its wonders and its warm and creative people that warms the hearts of passion.
The streets decorated in white and blue, full of Neapolitan pride which, through a game, flows into the essence of life, that of the continuous search for a happiness too often lost behind futile things.

Living the city these days is understanding Happiness, the true concept of life, almost turns upside down and everything, for me, in a dimension of perennial childhood.

I think I have an irrational relationship with Naples that intoxicates my mind and fills my heart and I, disarmed by this, let myself be transported into a timeless dimension, where reason bows respectfully down to an immoderate Passion.

This is my small tribute to the city and its wonderful people, that make Naples the city of joy, where dreams came true.

Behind the scene of a decadent giant

This is the sad little story, like so many scattered throughout the Italian territory, of a slow and inexorable decline of a noble palace and of the people who lived there, taken as an example to bring to the attention of the reader, a much wider phenomenon and which, as mentioned, involves our historical heritage throughout the Italian territory.

This palace was built in the seventeenth century by the noble local family, in whose hands it will remain until the early years of the new millennium.

Over the centuries, there have been numerous renovations, due to external events such as earthquakes, Unfortunately, arriving at the present days, in conjunction with the decline of the family, in recent decades, the building has suffered serious and irreparable damages, mainly due to neglect, which inevitably marked its fate.

The house is fully shored up, to avoid structural collapses, and today it is totally unusable. Completely emptied of any element of value, left to collapse in general indifference, today his sheltering pigeons and cats who have found the comfort of a house among its noble rubble.

As anticipated in the first line, this is a fairly common photo story in Italy, where, growing abandonment and wild overbuilding, they leave our territory with hundreds of thousands of forgotten buildings. The numbers are frightening, and trace the profile of a nation that is slowly crumbling, about 6% of all Italian real estate assets are on the way to becoming ruined, a percentage that continues to grow year after year.

Only for statistical purposes, here are some data: About 50,000 buildings are now in a state of neglect, including noble palaces, villas and castles . Approximately 20,000 between ecclesiastical buildings, churches, abbeys and convents in disuse.

The rediscovery of these places, excluding the romanticism of memories, hides a serious social problem: the erosion of the territory. Suffice it to say that it is estimated that over 10,000 square km of territory already occupied by abandoned buildings, in addition to a constant and increasing overbuilding, only in 2018, about 2 square meters per second were cemented, the equivalent of 15 football fields a day.

Today We let concrete devour the territory, the overdevelopment of suburban urban areas, the countless building abuses in protected and at-risk areas, new and useless commercial areas, forgetting the numerous abandoned places that could be redeveloped.

But to us all this seems to leave us indifferent, continuing to build and abandon, following the consumerist logic that has long governed our lifestyles and that will soon lead us to the dissolution of our natural and historical beauties.