The eighth wonder of the world

San Paolo is a marvelous and enormous city, where the Arsenale della Speranza was born, from which every night more than a thousand dreams rise to the sky Instead of slaves There was a nauseating, unbreathable smell in May 1995, when I saw , indeed I "felt", for the first time the house of the emigrants in the Brás district, in the center of São Paulo in Brazil. 955,502 Italians have passed through this large house alone, called "Hospedaria dos Imigrantes", who have populated this large city, becoming its largest community.

Dom Luciano accompanied me "to see" the proposal of the Government of the State of São Paulo. They wanted to entrust us with this house of pain, as it was defined by popular tradition. Millions and millions of emigrants from Europe and Asia had passed through. They didn't know it, but many came to take the place left by the slaves in the cultivation of the fields.

Memorial do imigrante The museum tells the story of emigrants. There are clothes that recall the traditions of the Irish, there are dishes that reveal the culture of other immigrants, there is also a model of a ship, the portable altar of a missionary, old photos, faces that have marked the history of Brazil. I open the first of the 150 registers and discover that the first registered Italian was called Rossi Valentino, 1887. No personal data was entered for the first emigrants. The first Italians regularly registered are a family of 12: Giuseppe, 41, his wife Marcolina, 40, with their eight children, plus their father Domenico, 70, and his brother Luigi, 32.

Pains were also noted here. Giuseppe and Angela, two farmers, set off with their dreams from the port of Genoa, but soon they will encounter excruciating pain: their one-month-old son dies during the crossing, the emigrants' house collects his tears and records them: 16 August 1887. Italy, Italy, how many children had to emigrate to find a piece of bread. I think of these pains that made me think even more: to accept or not to accept; after understanding which house of pain we would end up in, the responsibility was even greater.

More than a thousand enter this house On 22 February 1996 we enter the Arsenale della Speranza: this is the name we immediately gave to the house. We set up a cooperative with 65 Brazilian friends.

The base was the friends of the parish of San Rafael, with whom we had been meeting in prayer for some years and with whom we had shared some projects carried out in Brazil. Together with them, in a short time, the 100 guest friends became 300, then 400 and then what on December 12, 1995 - the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of Latin America - I had thought that by the year 2000 we would have welcomed a thousand people. I don't know who believed this dream. I know that together with Dom Luciano we immediately believed you.
It was thought? It has been done!

By the editorial team
NP March 2023