A place for everyone

Dino: What kind of relationship has the Sermig built with non-believers?

As a friend reminded us recently, faith is not the end of the search — it is its beginning. We are all — and will always be — at the start of a journey that continues, pauses, and starts again... We are travelers, and the road we walk is the same.

Along this road, Sermig has grown by finding teachers among both those who have found faith and those who haven’t. Each person has been a true gift, teaching us something: some to look at reality in a new way, some to act differently, some to choose more decisively the path of love. Thanks to them, our story has taken shape. It has not always been easy or straightforward, but we have entered our lives with greater awareness. I remember the father of a young man who chose to live at the Arsenale as a life decision. He was not a believer and could not understand his son’s choice. One day he told me: “You do nothing for people like me who don’t believe. You think only of yourselves. You hold no meetings where I could take part: either I come to pray, or there’s no place for me.”
His words made me think, because one of our strongest ideas has always been to live the Arsenale as a home for everyone — believers and non-believers alike.

I shared the episode with the Fraternity, and in us arose an urgency to do more for non-believers. That urgency became an intuition, which in turn became a project: the University of Dialogue, born from doubt. Through monthly meetings open to everyone and aimed at offering ongoing formation in political, economic, social, and cultural areas, that father was able to experience a welcoming environment without judgment. Building relationships requires deep mutual respect. We are believers, but participation in more spiritual moments is a personal choice. What unites us is the commitment to build peace and share good with the most fragile and poor. Our reference point remains Jesus: what would Jesus do today in our place? How would He treat that foreigner, that believer in another faith, that non-believer, that young person? How can we bring into our daily lives the same deep understanding and mercy that Jesus lived? But compassion, the ability to love and to give, are part of the human DNA and unite us all. Often, those who have not reached faith live them with even greater intensity, helping believers to go to the essence and to seek truth within themselves. It also happens with young people. Today it’s not taken for granted that they grew up in faith or received the sacraments in adolescence. Many come to us without meaningful contact with faith, or having already set it aside. They want to help, driven by a human impulse that pushes them beyond themselves, toward others. With them too we have learned to walk together, one step at a time, respecting their search but never hiding who we are and what we believe. They observe us, trying to understand the heart of our faith; they question us, they feel nostalgia for God, nostalgia for fraternity: welcome, listening, understanding, mutual help, giving oneself, shared daily life...

We are not perfect; we are as we are, not finished, still on the way, and we do not hide it. Yet, despite how little we are — or perhaps because we know it and know we’re not enough on our own — we experience every day that our God also uses us to reach the humanity that seeks Him, that seeks meaning in life. Encouraged by so many friends who search passionately, we too, as we are, try to communicate our faith with honesty. After all, the rule of Sermig is addressed to everyone — the Rule of Yes: for those who believe, for those who don’t, for those who think they believe, for those who think they don’t, for those who believe that goodness brings peace. And that’s no play on words.

NP June/July 2025
Rosanna Tabasso