1991 Chiara's adventure on the road starts…

I've always looked for something that could give a deeper meaning to my existence. I told myself: I have only one life, I want to spend it for something great! I was looking for peace, for freedom, for that source capable of quenching my restless heart, for joy and, suddenly, a sentence from the Gospel shot me like lightning…

Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love… These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15,9-12).

To me it was a magnificent discovery, a revelation, a real shock. I started experiencing how the harder I was going at loving the way Jesus taught us, more my heart was bursting with happiness. It was such a strong joy, that could bear the most terrible trials of life.

At 21 I had a terrible disease that caused me excruciating pain throughout the body and no painkiller could quench it. Even my eyes were affected and my visual acuity became 20/100 and, being that an incurable chronic disease with involvement of the retina, doctors told me that in time I would have surely become blind. It's been a very painful long-lasting trial, but, even in such a tragic situation, I could feel the fullness of joy that Christ gives us, together with the overwhelming desire to live the rest of my life bringing and witnessing this joy especially to the more desperate people, walking to Termini railway station at night, as well as to the "hottest" areas of the city. All this just to meet young people rejected due to their involvement in some form of deviant behaviour (drugs, alcohol, AIDS, prostitution, prison, marginalisation. I could realise how dangerous could it be for a young girl to walk the roads at night, considering that such physical problems I was facing wouldn't have helped me in my commitment. Therefore I made a simple prayer:

"Lord, if You are transmitting me this crazy desire to walk the roads at night, then put me in a better position to realise it! Nothing is impossible to You! I just want to do your will!"

The answer was immediate and beyond my imagination. On the following morning I went to the hospital for my daily injections to my eyes and I was informed about the incredible news directly from the head physician (who came to check what incredibly happened):

Chiara, we feel at a loss for words, you've completely recovered! This is a mystery to those who don't believe, and it's an extraordinary grace for who believes: your disease has completely and inexplicably disappeared!

I knew how to explain that, I certainly knew it! That was the Lord's answer to my simple prayer I made the night before… and He answered as only He knows how.

My case sheet had been examined by the best luminaries in Europe and even in the U.S.A.: all of them agreed on the impossibility for me to recover. No doubt I would have become blind: it was just a matter of time! Facts are facts: from night to day my visual acuity changed from 20/100 to 20/16. Definitely incredible!

So, I started walking at night moved by a simple desire: sharing my joy for having met the Risen Christ particularly with the most desperate brothers.

I could not imagine to meet such a huge group of lonely, marginalised, broken-hearted and dignity-deprived young people, victims of both the tentacles of diabolical octopuses and of the most shameful slavery. So many girls sold as slaves and forced to sell their bodies to unscrupulous people. So many broken young, imprisoned by the illusion of an artificial heaven that killed their souls. So many silent and piercing screams listened by nobody; so much desperation, rage, violence, deviance, crime… but, at the same time, so much thirst for love, for God even there, in the depths of darkness of the hell of the road.

I felt a certain fear and tremor to enter on my tiptoe the stories of those living in the "hottest" areas of the city. I immediately was shocked by the thirst for listening, for truth, for peace, for love for… God, even in that hell. Many of the so-called "criminals", some of which having a shocking criminal record, weren't bad people at all: they were just unloved people; young persons with a great sensibility but their heart had become petrified because of the violence they had suffered. Some others had arrived from poor countries but having worthy resolutions and ambitions, but too soon had been caught by the organised crime that never forgives. Some others, coming from families of good social rank (I had already met some of them before) had been bewitched by seducing proposals (pleasure, money, success, appearance) and then had slipped into a state of deep dissatisfaction, loneliness, thin nausea not being able to find answers… young people with a great emptiness inside their hearts, who previously had tried to fill it getting high, breaking free, taking drugs.

Many of them were surprised by the presence of a young woman in such dangerous areas at night, and after having shared some of their suffering and desperate stories they told me:

Now it's your turn to tell us your story. What is a girl like you doing here amongst us at such an hour? Don't you understand how dangerous it can be for you? You're putting yourself at risk for people that you don't eve know! Who did you do that for?…

I simply shared a part of my story as well, explaining them how my meeting with the Risen Christ had changed my life completely: I had finally found in Jesus the Truth that sets us free, I had found abundant life, I had found the road to reach the fullness of joy and peace that my heart most desired. They frequently reacted with surprise, curiosity and incredibly open-mindedness:

If the joy we can see in your eyes really comes from Jesus and if He is pushes you to risk your life for us, tell us something more about 'dis Jesus!

and then they started throwing out a bunch of different questions. Most of the time these meetings ended with a heartfelt request:

Take us away from this hell on the street. We also want to know this Jesus that changed your life!

I soon realised that, even if I was in Rome, in the heart of Christianity, I could not find a place where to move those brothers in such a desperate need of being welcomed and of meeting Jesus. There were so many canteens, hostels, therapeutic or working communities, but I wasn't able to find the right one: it had to immediately host my young friends from the street and grant them a spiritual and human accompaniment, based on the Gospel in a way committed to interior reconstruction and healing of the heart.

I soon ascertained that the real problem for the majority of those young people I was meeting at night was not so much misery, drug-addiction, alcoholism, deviance, violence, criminality, AIDS or prostitution, but rather… the terrible evil of the death of the soul.

The Scriptures clearly state that the wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23) and every night with my new friends of the street I experienced this tragic truth. I met people in the fullness of youth who were dead inside because they had tried to look for answers to their needs of freedom, joy, personal fulfilment, which were all present in their hearts, by following seducing proposals. They had met false prophets who seduced them with their illusory visions of spurious happiness (which soon become cold winters), but they had never met someone who had witnessed them the Christ is the Truth, the Life, that He made us and became man to show us the road to the fullness of joy (Jn 15:11) and of peace (Jn 14:27).

Many of the first meetings wounded and branded deeply my heart.

I met Vyria, sold by her brother to a cruel group of pimps, forced in cold rooms, repeatedly raped and terrified with scars and cigarette burns to avoid her escape.

I met Maria, who, at the age of 17, was repeatedly forced to drink animal blood, to participate in black masses and orgiastic rites with loathsome violence on children.

I met Mauro, a very handsome dark two-meter-tall boy but reduced to a skeleton, consumed by drugs and AIDS, who said: "You know, I've been lining in the street for 20 years and you are the first person that sops by to ask me how I feel with no ulterior motives."

I met Claudia, a 16-year-old girl who helped a friend to escape from prostitution and, on account of this, she saw her friend being covered with cuts and then become food for pigs.

The more I walked the streets at night, more my heart was carved with the following certainty: only meeting Him who came to bind the wounds of broken hearts, to preach the gospel to the poor (Lk 4:18), to give us the joy of the Resurrection, could give life back to those who are in death.

So I had the idea of creating a community to welcome and accompany people and proposing a rule of Gospel life. Naturally, I had thousand fears, I was well aware of the fact that it was almost foolish to think to easily find a house where to live with people of the street. This, not just because I was just a 27-year-old girl with neither money nor professional experiences (I graduated in Political Science), but also because those people from the street were considered very dangerous by everybody. In my heart I knew that all things are possible to God (Mk 9:23).

In March 1994, completely in trusting abandonment to divine Providence, the first Community New Horizons was born. There I started living with those new brothers I had met in the street before and I suggested them to try to live the Gospel. I have definitely been watching thousands of young people with completely different extreme experiences rebuilding their lives in the light of the love of Jesus and moving from death to life.

The answer that these people gave to my proposal of literally living a Gospel life was surprising and exciting. The first house was filled with mattresses on the floor in order to welcome more and more people knocking on our door. That simple little cottage gave birth to new centres all over Italy and abroad.

The same welcomed young people immediately felt the need of undertaking a pastoral care of the street where they can be active not like good preachers, but like witnesses able to strongly proclaim that the meeting with the Risen Christ changed their lives.

Some of them (412, many from the street) decided to vow their poverty, chastity, obedience and joy, to God and to witness that Christ came to give back the fullness of His joy (Jn 17:13).

I can say that, if, on the one hand this experience gave us the possibility to contemplate the miracles of the grace, on the other we realised that the SOS sent out by young people is more alarming than what official statistics state.

About 80% of the teenagers that we have met suffered from at least one of the worrying symptoms characterising youth and street life broadly speaking: alcohol abuse, use and abuse of drugs (particularly joints, cocaine and ecstasy), discomfort and deviance at various levels, sexual abuse, anorexia and bulimia, depressive and personality disorders, membership in various sect, deep wounds in the area of feelings and emotions, serious family problems… and we perceive the total absence of interventions.

Itis really urgent for us to listen to the terrible cry that everyday the people of the night raise to heaven. There are too many desperate brothers who are dying everyday on the desert of our cities. Each of us can do little, but together with Him who is love we can invent all sorts of colours to colour all the hells of the world. One thing is for sure: Love does miracles!

1991 Chiara's adventure on the road starts…

I've always looked for something that could give a deeper meaning to my existence. I told myself: I have only one life, I want to spend it for something great! I was looking for peace, for freedom, for that source capable of quenching my restless heart, for joy and, suddenly, a sentence from the Gospel shot me like lightning…

Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love… These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15,9-12).

To me it was a magnificent discovery, a revelation, a real shock. I started experiencing how the harder I was going at loving the way Jesus taught us, more my heart was bursting with happiness. It was such a strong joy, that could bear the most terrible trials of life.

At 21 I had a terrible disease that caused me excruciating pain throughout the body and no painkiller could quench it. Even my eyes were affected and my visual acuity became 20/100 and, being that an incurable chronic disease with involvement of the retina, doctors told me that in time I would have surely become blind. It's been a very painful long-lasting trial, but, even in such a tragic situation, I could feel the fullness of joy that Christ gives us, together with the overwhelming desire to live the rest of my life bringing and witnessing this joy especially to the more desperate people, walking to Termini railway station at night, as well as to the "hottest" areas of the city. All this just to meet young people rejected due to their involvement in some form of deviant behaviour (drugs, alcohol, AIDS, prostitution, prison, marginalisation. I could realise how dangerous could it be for a young girl to walk the roads at night, considering that such physical problems I was facing wouldn't have helped me in my commitment. Therefore I made a simple prayer:

"Lord, if You are transmitting me this crazy desire to walk the roads at night, then put me in a better position to realise it! Nothing is impossible to You! I just want to do your will!"

The answer was immediate and beyond my imagination. On the following morning I went to the hospital for my daily injections to my eyes and I was informed about the incredible news directly from the head physician (who came to check what incredibly happened):

Chiara, we feel at a loss for words, you've completely recovered! This is a mystery to those who don't believe, and it's an extraordinary grace for who believes: your disease has completely and inexplicably disappeared!

I knew how to explain that, I certainly knew it! That was the Lord's answer to my simple prayer I made the night before… and He answered as only He knows how.

My case sheet had been examined by the best luminaries in Europe and even in the U.S.A.: all of them agreed on the impossibility for me to recover. No doubt I would have become blind: it was just a matter of time! Facts are facts: from night to day my visual acuity changed from 20/100 to 20/16. Definitely incredible!

So, I started walking at night moved by a simple desire: sharing my joy for having met the Risen Christ particularly with the most desperate brothers.

I could not imagine to meet such a huge group of lonely, marginalised, broken-hearted and dignity-deprived young people, victims of both the tentacles of diabolical octopuses and of the most shameful slavery. So many girls sold as slaves and forced to sell their bodies to unscrupulous people. So many broken young, imprisoned by the illusion of an artificial heaven that killed their souls. So many silent and piercing screams listened by nobody; so much desperation, rage, violence, deviance, crime… but, at the same time, so much thirst for love, for God even there, in the depths of darkness of the hell of the road.

I felt a certain fear and tremor to enter on my tiptoe the stories of those living in the "hottest" areas of the city. I immediately was shocked by the thirst for listening, for truth, for peace, for love for… God, even in that hell. Many of the so-called "criminals", some of which having a shocking criminal record, weren't bad people at all: they were just unloved people; young persons with a great sensibility but their heart had become petrified because of the violence they had suffered. Some others had arrived from poor countries but having worthy resolutions and ambitions, but too soon had been caught by the organised crime that never forgives. Some others, coming from families of good social rank (I had already met some of them before) had been bewitched by seducing proposals (pleasure, money, success, appearance) and then had slipped into a state of deep dissatisfaction, loneliness, thin nausea not being able to find answers… young people with a great emptiness inside their hearts, who previously had tried to fill it getting high, breaking free, taking drugs.

Many of them were surprised by the presence of a young woman in such dangerous areas at night, and after having shared some of their suffering and desperate stories they told me:

Now it's your turn to tell us your story. What is a girl like you doing here amongst us at such an hour? Don't you understand how dangerous it can be for you? You're putting yourself at risk for people that you don't eve know! Who did you do that for?…

I simply shared a part of my story as well, explaining them how my meeting with the Risen Christ had changed my life completely: I had finally found in Jesus the Truth that sets us free, I had found abundant life, I had found the road to reach the fullness of joy and peace that my heart most desired. They frequently reacted with surprise, curiosity and incredibly open-mindedness:

If the joy we can see in your eyes really comes from Jesus and if He is pushes you to risk your life for us, tell us something more about 'dis Jesus!

and then they started throwing out a bunch of different questions. Most of the time these meetings ended with a heartfelt request:

Take us away from this hell on the street. We also want to know this Jesus that changed your life!

I soon realised that, even if I was in Rome, in the heart of Christianity, I could not find a place where to move those brothers in such a desperate need of being welcomed and of meeting Jesus. There were so many canteens, hostels, therapeutic or working communities, but I wasn't able to find the right one: it had to immediately host my young friends from the street and grant them a spiritual and human accompaniment, based on the Gospel in a way committed to interior reconstruction and healing of the heart.

I soon ascertained that the real problem for the majority of those young people I was meeting at night was not so much misery, drug-addiction, alcoholism, deviance, violence, criminality, AIDS or prostitution, but rather… the terrible evil of the death of the soul.

The Scriptures clearly state that the wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23) and every night with my new friends of the street I experienced this tragic truth. I met people in the fullness of youth who were dead inside because they had tried to look for answers to their needs of freedom, joy, personal fulfilment, which were all present in their hearts, by following seducing proposals. They had met false prophets who seduced them with their illusory visions of spurious happiness (which soon become cold winters), but they had never met someone who had witnessed them the Christ is the Truth, the Life, that He made us and became man to show us the road to the fullness of joy (Jn 15:11) and of peace (Jn 14:27).

Many of the first meetings wounded and branded deeply my heart.

I met Vyria, sold by her brother to a cruel group of pimps, forced in cold rooms, repeatedly raped and terrified with scars and cigarette burns to avoid her escape.

I met Maria, who, at the age of 17, was repeatedly forced to drink animal blood, to participate in black masses and orgiastic rites with loathsome violence on children.

I met Mauro, a very handsome dark two-meter-tall boy but reduced to a skeleton, consumed by drugs and AIDS, who said: "You know, I've been lining in the street for 20 years and you are the first person that sops by to ask me how I feel with no ulterior motives."

I met Claudia, a 16-year-old girl who helped a friend to escape from prostitution and, on account of this, she saw her friend being covered with cuts and then become food for pigs.

The more I walked the streets at night, more my heart was carved with the following certainty: only meeting Him who came to bind the wounds of broken hearts, to preach the gospel to the poor (Lk 4:18), to give us the joy of the Resurrection, could give life back to those who are in death.

So I had the idea of creating a community to welcome and accompany people and proposing a rule of Gospel life. Naturally, I had thousand fears, I was well aware of the fact that it was almost foolish to think to easily find a house where to live with people of the street. This, not just because I was just a 27-year-old girl with neither money nor professional experiences (I graduated in Political Science), but also because those people from the street were considered very dangerous by everybody. In my heart I knew that all things are possible to God (Mk 9:23).

In March 1994, completely in trusting abandonment to divine Providence, the first Community New Horizons was born. There I started living with those new brothers I had met in the street before and I suggested them to try to live the Gospel. I have definitely been watching thousands of young people with completely different extreme experiences rebuilding their lives in the light of the love of Jesus and moving from death to life.

The answer that these people gave to my proposal of literally living a Gospel life was surprising and exciting. The first house was filled with mattresses on the floor in order to welcome more and more people knocking on our door. That simple little cottage gave birth to new centres all over Italy and abroad.

The same welcomed young people immediately felt the need of undertaking a pastoral care of the street where they can be active not like good preachers, but like witnesses able to strongly proclaim that the meeting with the Risen Christ changed their lives.

Some of them (412, many from the street) decided to vow their poverty, chastity, obedience and joy, to God and to witness that Christ came to give back the fullness of His joy (Jn 17:13).

I can say that, if, on the one hand this experience gave us the possibility to contemplate the miracles of the grace, on the other we realised that the SOS sent out by young people is more alarming than what official statistics state.

About 80% of the teenagers that we have met suffered from at least one of the worrying symptoms characterising youth and street life broadly speaking: alcohol abuse, use and abuse of drugs (particularly joints, cocaine and ecstasy), discomfort and deviance at various levels, sexual abuse, anorexia and bulimia, depressive and personality disorders, membership in various sect, deep wounds in the area of feelings and emotions, serious family problems… and we perceive the total absence of interventions.

It is really urgent for us to listen to the terrible cry that everyday the people of the night raise to heaven. There are too many desperate brothers who are dying everyday on the desert of our cities. Each of us can do little, but together with Him who is love we can invent all sorts of colours to colour all the hells of the world. One thing is for sure: Love does miracles!