Sister church

Publish date 09-06-2025

by Rosanna Tabasso

The urgency for the Church is to rediscover the essence of its being the body of Jesus. Not a structure but a presence, the presence of Jesus in our time, in our world, for each of us and among the people, to prepare the “already and not yet” that is the Kingdom of God among us. It is urgent that the Church return to the Gospel, return to being a Church that has its lifestyle in the Beatitudes: poverty, meekness, choices of justice and peace. The urgency for the Church is to live the Gospel in a context of brotherhood: there we rediscover that we are children of the same Father and therefore brothers among ourselves with Jesus. United by the same Spirit. The Church needs experiences that bring us back to this awareness and this lifestyle. Nothing exceptional, a simple life, where with all the limitations and hardships we start again from the Gospel and from loving each other.

In recent days some of us have been invited to Sicily by a priest, a friend of our Fraternity. We had not yet visited his new parish where he has been working for five years and we came back edified by what we saw and breathed. In a complex territory full of problems (among which the most serious is perhaps the lack of work), the community has chosen to put prayer at the center of its daily life: night and day the church is open and the people - young people, adults, old people and children with their parish priest - animate a continuous prayer. From there and from the intuitions that the Spirit suggests, the life of the parish starts again, with simplicity, with spontaneity.
Without fuss but with great awareness. We were very struck by the young people, who speak of Jesus as a friend they have truly known, not by hearsay, but because they met him present among them in the Eucharist.

We found something similar, albeit in a different context, in a town in central Italy, where the community is united and in agreement in putting the education of children and young people at the center and determined to offer them the best of energy and resources.
The Church is reborn in this way, putting Jesus Word and Bread at the center and living the journey of faith together, as He lived. A Church close to the poor, concretely.
A Church that loves young people, in truth, that starts again by making young people experience the community.
A Church that is refounded on the Gospel and experiences the brotherhood of loving and esteeming each other.

It is the same for us. We have lived it day after day within the walls of the Arsenale, listening and discerning the signs of the times, so as to give our presence in this portion of the world the form that the Holy Spirit indicated to us: an open door to give hope to people, to welcome the poor, to be a sign among young people.

Seven years ago I remember that speaking of the Church, Ernesto told us: "Today a new poor person is knocking at our door: it is the Church that needs help and we must make ourselves available." It took a while to digest this statement, but it was a decisive moment. Up until that moment we felt sent by the Church to do services; instead, we understood that we had to welcome the Church among us and help it to be reborn.
We had recently had the first priests among us and with them we felt we had reached the completeness of a fraternity that had become priestly: we are all priests with them, wherever they are and whatever their task.

So we took a new step, we agreed to help the local Church by taking on two parishes and the Basilica of Superga over the years. We would never have imagined it. Up until that moment we did not think it could become a priority of Sermig. Our contribution to the rebirth of the Church in the diocesan reality is to put our experience of fraternity at the service, to revive others. We do not feel better than others, we have certainly not arrived. Like everyone else, we are on a journey and, as we share, we learn, we change, we grow too.


Rosanna Tabasso
NP February 2025

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