Isabel

Two big big eyes that come towards you, through which you read every smallest motion of his heart. She is petite and frail, a color in her hair, a pink dress, a faint voice, and a smile that expands when she sees you. This is Isabel, 9 years old. She has recently been in Italy with her mother and her brother Prosper.

Isabel has a disease that requires frequent transfusions in order to live. A few years ago her illness affected her left leg making it difficult for her to walk like all the other children. For 9 years, the mother has been fighting against everything and everyone to be able to cure her princess, because that's what she calls it. Treatment in Nigeria is paid for and Isabel was always sick. Twice a month she needed transfusions and the hospital required a sum of 500 thousand naira (which corresponds to about one thousand euros) for each hospitalization. Isabel's father passed away several years ago, tired of having to incur expenses for a little girl who would never recover anyway. Isabel doesn't know why dad left, Prosper does, and for that she hates him with all his strength. When he left, many of her proposed to Isabel's mother to give her injections to make her die. So it was for the twins, sick, their neighbors, unsustainable health care costs, the solution was rat poison.

In too many countries of the world even today, shamefully, treatment continues to be a privilege for a few and not a right for everyone. The child is now better, and once a month, thanks also to the constancy of her donor, she has a fixed appointment with the transfusion. A few days ago she received baptism. She has desired and asked for it since the first day she entered the Arsenale church.

When the priest marked her with the blessed oil she said these words: "In Christ, Isabel, you are priest, king, and prophet". Words that resounded in me and among those present with the force of a tornado and that awakened others: «God has chosen what is foolish for the world to confuse the wise, what is weak for the world God has chosen to confound the strong, what is despised what is nothing God has chosen to reduce to nothing the things that are (1 Cor 1:26)". We need him, his heart, his gaze, his thoughts to live in this world and be able to recognize in every man who comes to meet us the uniqueness, sacredness and preciousness of every child of his.

Simona Pagani
NP October 2022