An arsenal many arsenals: Arsenal of Hope

It is difficult to think of enclosing in one page what has been brought to Brazil from the Turin Arsenal and has borne fruit. The question immediately seems too big to answer. But then one of the most precious teachings left to us by Dom Luciano comes to us: «To love as God loves is to ensure that others are capable of loving».
Perhaps this could be the heart of the much good that has been generated by the Arsenale della Speranza in all these years. Our peculiarity.

What we have brought most preciously across the Atlantic is the desire to involve new friends in the most beautiful adventure of our lives: that of Sermig. An adventure animated by the dream of a more just world, where no one dies of hunger, which takes the form of getting involved personally to the point of giving our entire lives. Involving even the poorest in this circle of love because if I love you I can also try to help you, welcome you, give you a place to rest, feed you. But if I truly love you I must help you discover that you are capable of loving, of truly loving and entering into this circle of restitution.
It is this heart that has borne many fruits, sometimes small and sometimes larger, during these 27 years of presence in Brazil. It's difficult to remember them all, but just looking at some of them fills you with gratitude.

The first was precisely the fact that a few of us left and discovered that two or three of us, bringing with us Sermig's most precious seed which is his charisma and all his experience, can give life to an Arsenal and experience that around that seed thrown with so much faith, even on the other side of the world, available people arrive through whom Providence works its wonders.
Ernesto Olivero, speaking of the Arsenal of Hope, defined it this way many times: the eighth wonder of the world. Thinking about the history of this house and looking at the first photos of when we arrived here it is not difficult to understand why.

We entered what was the ancient hospedaria de imigrantes, which saw millions of people pass by in search of a better future, arriving here full of expectations, hopes, but also of fatigue and suffering for a journey that was never easy to face. We began to rearrange it as we had learned in the experience of the Turin Arsenal: without being frightened by what apparently seemed impossible, but by rolling up our sleeves, trying to make the Arsenal beautiful and welcoming, a home for many. Passing through infinite gestures of good, ours and the many friends who accompanied us on this adventure. In the meantime we began to welcome, bringing with us the precious baggage stored night after night in Turin. 72,000 men have passed through in recent years, accompanied by our continually asking ourselves what we could invent to welcome them as we would have liked to be welcomed. And this has given rise, among the many initiatives, to the Growing Forest in which our guests are invited to participate with us in voluntary actions aimed at helping kindergartens, centers for the disabled or to rearrange some corners of our city, experimenting how this spark of good lights up a small light even for those who are going through difficult times. With the 2013 World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro we opened up even more to the young people who have always held a special place in the heart of our fraternity and we have never stopped looking for them to help us change our city a little and the world.

One of the most recent fruits are the priestly vocations of three of us, who grew up here in Brazil, and the two parishes that have been entrusted to us in recent years and which have once again changed our lives a little. The space is finite, the fruits are not and we hope they can continue to surprise us and ensure that Sermig's presence in Brazil is increasingly as God dreamed it.

Arsenal of Hope
SPECIAL: An Arsenal that speaks
NP June / July 2023