Monica Natali, a Waldensian deacon, reports from Calabria and Messina on the beginning of her new ministry.
If I had to use a few words to describe the beginning of my diaconal ministry in the area of Calabria and Messina after my experience in Palermo, I would say: discoveries, relationships, surprises, and projects.
I didn’t know this area at all. Sometimes, perhaps, it’s good that way: you come open to learning new things, free from preformed ideas, without expectations about what people will be like. You come just with the desire to understand and to build.
My assignment as a deacon in this area includes the creation, development, and empowerment of new diaconal projects and activities based in Waldensian churches in the district (Messina, Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro, Dipignano, and Cosenza), the revitalization of the Protestant “Bethel” Center in Sila, and a special focus on activities that can support women and the right of everyone to access healthcare.
To accomplish these tasks, I need, first of all, to understand where I am! Getting to understand where I am is basically what I have been doing from the beginning of September to this moment. I have spent my time traveling, discovering new places, meeting people and talking with them, getting to know various expressions of civil society in this region as well as individuals who care about “the good of the city,” and trying to connect all this with our congregations, however small, dispersed, fragile, and aged they might be.
It’s about making our churches as open as possible in both directions – open to people coming in and open to people going out into the world – and, in being open, overcoming the temptation of retreat, distrust, and discouragement and making the delightful discovery that there are companions on the journey ready to join us. That is what matters: each one on the journey motivated by different reasons but united in the fact that they are going in the same direction and have the same purpose. In this region that purpose often manifests itself as a passion for social justice, as a determination to engage in the struggle against injustices (of which there are many!) and as a fight against every form of ethnic, cultural, and gender discrimination in the hope of making this difficult land of Calabria a place from which people will not only stop fleeing – migrating toward the global north of this world – but will even want to return. Is this purpose just a pious illusion? Is this purpose just a fantastic utopia for sadly poor deluded people? No! It is a determination to move toward, an awareness that we move forward not alone, but together with others. It is “hoping against hope.”
The socio-political context of Calabria is very complex and difficult. To give an example: Because of management failures, various scandals, and the waste of financial resources, healthcare at the regional level has been under a special commissioner for 14 years, which is evidence of the local government’s inability to fulfill its role in promoting, planning, and protecting the Calabrian population from a socio-health perspective, with the consequence that the most fragile and impoverished people have undertaken “health migrations” to other Italian regions (especially in northern Italy, which are considered to be more cutting-edge or efficient. These 14 years have produced a “desertification” of socio-health services, the dismantling of 18 hospitals, and above all, the failure to manage increasingly emergent issues such as mental health problems and alcohol and substance abuse.
The real cause of many of these problems is not the lack of resources but rather that resources are allocated in the wrong places or spent for the benefit of private entities. A second also very real cause of many of these problems is ‘institutional decay’, in which the ‘ndrangheta (the Calabrian mafia) manages to infiltrate all of society, and with its power, subjugates individuals, groups, and communities. At the same time, defeatism and resignation (“nothing will ever change here…”) are powerful levers for social control in the hands of those who profit from their social and political power. A people who resign themselves is not dangerous to the powerful; a people who hope is! Hope is dangerous for those who want to hinder positive change.
I spend much of my time going in search of beautiful people and beautiful realities. There is so much beauty in this territory (I feel I’m falling in love with it!) There is also so much desire here for redemption.
But it’s necessary to listen, to let others tell their stories, to gather experiences, to try to understand, always to suspend judgment, to collaborate, to recognize the connections, to serve and build networks and to enter into already existing and effective networks, to move in harmony with an “overall vision,” to dream, to hope. With the strength that comes only from the Lord, trusting in Him alone and in the certainty that only God can perform miracles, we try to do our part as well.
Thanks to God, in the exercise of my ministry I have a certain freedom and autonomy. I am focusing my ministry precisely on where I sense there are needs or situations where we, as the Waldensian Church, can speak a word or perform concrete actions that testify to our faith and how we live it in service to others. This is the case with the Reggio Calabria diaspora: places where “pieces” of our Church already exist – such as the Mediterranean Hope project of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy, with its focus on migrant agricultural workers who are often exploited, subject to racism, and left abandoned in scandalous living conditions. I live part of my ministry in this diaspora.
The condition of women also presents its challenges. Despite apparent progress, this region still has a strongly patriarchal and even violent cultural attitudes toward women. There are many Calabrias: the big cities, the university cities (including Cosenza, known as the “Athens of Italy” because of its unmatched artistic, cultural and intellectual tradition), areas where multiculturalism is experienced as wealth and sharing; and, in contrast, the small towns and villages, where depopulation and general decline go hand in hand with the culture of silence. In these places, the “hidden” weighs heavily. There are some areas where African migrants are effectively reduced to being slave labor: people who are essential for the agricultural economy, but are unwanted in informal social networks and condemned to invisibility. Calabria is a region of cities and suburbs, wide open coastlines, and rugged and mountainous inland areas.
My work is taking different forms depending on where I am and whom I’m with, precisely because, if you want to do my work, you can’t arrive with pre-packaged solutions that disregard the characteristics, histories, experiences, human resources, and natural inclinations of individual congregations. Neither can you disregard the respective histories, experiences, and human resources they can put in play, nor their natural inclinations, influenced by many factors, including demographic and sociological ones. Therefore, some projects are already underway or in the process of starting, but connected to the churches to which from a diaconal point of view I am entrusted. They are often more open to collaborations and synergies with other groups in the local area. These projects are based on relationships, on getting to know each other, on understanding ‘what we can do together’. These are projects that lead the members of our congregations to take part in diaconal work, projects that aim to make our churches ‘diaconal communities’, in the way of disciple that Jesus, the first deacon, who said, “I came to serve not to be served,” taught us.
So, what can I say about this area? Messina is the extreme northeastern tip of Sicily, separated from Calabria by a small strip of sea; Calabria is a beautiful land, with the green of the mountains and the blue of the sea; Aspromonte, on the Plain of Gioia Tauro, whose last spur located at the edge of the city of Palmi plunges into the Tyrrhenian Sea; and Sila, which is known for its enchanting woods. This is the Calabria of contradictions, at the very bottom of the Italian “boot,” where everything seems to unravel, but where everything can also change. Hoping against hope.
Monica Natali, a Waldensian deacon assigned to Calabria and Messina, wrote the above report. Monica (pictured above) is married to Bruno Gabrielli, a good friend to many members and friends of the American Waldensian Society.
