RIETI – Friday 3 May, full room at the San Giorgio Auditorium of the Varrone Foundation on the occasion of the unusual meeting organized by the CAI of Rieti, linked to the figure of Don Milani, the priest with boots and leader of a small community in Barbiana, in ‘Tuscan Apennines, where he experimented with his innovative teaching method which has become so forcefully current. A delegation of young people from the Epn Institute participated, but also teachers, parents, members of the CAI, representatives of the associations (including the FAI and Atletica Sport Terapia), secular institutions (the President of the Varrone Foundation) and religious institutions (the Imam of Rieti). Vibrating and penetrating was the intervention of Bishop Don Vito Piccinonna who involved everyone in an emotional and participatory silence. His calm thought shocked many consciences.
While schools are being closed in internal mountain areas due to a shortage of children enrolled and social spending that is too large for the State, while some are hoping for separation in classes between those with disabilities and those without, provoking reactions from President Mattarella, the mission by Don Milani, albeit in the context of the fifties and sixties of the last century, resonated so modern and authentically inclusive. Don Milani was always busy going to school, including Sundays, to free the poor children of his community from illiteracy. The Popular School was born with him. Today there are many pupils who are children of migrants and foreigners who attend Italian schools, and the themes of reception and integration are of the foreground.
The story of Don Milani was told in an original way by the young cartoonist Alice Milani, great-granddaughter of the priest, who wrote and drew the book Università e sheep (Feltrinelli), already with the title summarizing that world. At the time, the “pierini”, the children of the rich who had studied Italian and who therefore left with an advantage in everything, could access the University; the children of the farmers, to a lesser extent those of the workers, were cut off from education and therefore vulnerable, last on the social ladder, in their possible redemption.
After greetings from the President of the CAI of Rieti Francesco Battisti, Ines Millesimi who oversaw the initiative with the culture group of the section (full program of events on the meaning of the “limit”), outlined the powerful figure with the help of images of the priest then contested by the Church, from his beginnings as a painter to his robust culture (he knew 6 languages), to his conversion and his active commitment alongside the forgotten younger ones, those for whom the only future was to choose between the stable and the field. Believing that education was the most powerful antidote to avoid being marginalized and deluded by the powerful, Don Milani fought, as Alice Milani well explained, vehemently using the same strong popular language of his community, to better make himself understood. and enter their hearts. Today the Barbiana school is still an important example in its original testimony of faith and humanity, as the Bishop underlined, well beyond the attempts at exploitation and the easy trivializations of those who nitpick the well-known Letter to a teacher written by Don Milani with the help of his own students, republished with his other writings despite half a century’s censorship. And he recalled that Pope Francis has restored full citizenship to the thoughts and actions of Don Milani, a priest of a stinging and uncomfortable Christian faith, but always within the word of the Old Testament.
And the evening wanted to put the importance of education and inclusive school training back at the center as an access point to culture, both to build one’s identity and to face the obstacles of the outside world.
Numerous questions from the public, proving that there is an ever-increasing need for many Don Milanis in civil society and that it is more necessary than ever to feel like a “community of destiny”, priests, teachers, parents and institutions, to work together looking at young people with hope and joy, as underlined by Mons. Piccinonna. Who did not fail to thank the CAI for the usefulness of initiatives like these.
Next CAI event on Friday 14 June at 6pm, sponsored by the University of Tuscia and the Municipality of Rieti, entitled “Microplastics in the snow on Monte Terminillo”.
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