Holiness on a vespa

Publish date 22-04-2021

by Annamaria Gobbato

«Life is beautiful but if you love it is wonderful!». Speaking like this is Carla Ronci (1936-1970), a girl from Torre Pedrera (RN). Carla is not distinguished from the other girls of the people, her father is a fisherman, her mother has a fruit and vegetable banquet. She is beautiful, lively and intelligent, she studies with profit but the economic conditions of the family do not allow her to continue beyond elementary school.
She helps her mother, who also enrolls her in an evening course for seamstresses. Her hard work does not prevent the little family from enjoying simple entertainment, cinema and dancing in the dance hall. Carla is happy to participate and there is no shortage of admirers! But she feels that she is missing something, perhaps that serenity that she sees on the faces of the Ursuline nuns of the country. She would like to be like them, to follow Jesus more closely.
She even runs away from home to enter a convent, but this is not her way. By chance you come to know of an institute of lay consecrated women based in the Marche. She inquires and understands that she can dedicate herself to whoever she needs while remaining in the family. The difference in her will be made by union with God in the depths of her heart.
Reassured, she returns to her commitments with a smile and a well-groomed appearance as always. «I dress like other young people of my age with modesty and elegance and I try to make souls understand, with my life, that lived Christianity is not a cross, but joy». That joy that she will not abandon even in the two months in hospital before dying at the age of 35 from lung cancer.

Annamaria Gobbato
NP january 2021

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