In Milan, lGBT christians Will pray in a Church without walls
Article taken from Il Guado, bulletin of The research group on Faith and Homosexuality The Ford of Milan, Third Series, n.3, 5 march 2022, pp.1-2
An article in which we tell how the idea of organizing prayer meetings in the church of San Carlo in Via Lecco was born. We publish it in the hope of making you want to participate.
In the second half of the 15th century, Milan was experiencing one of its periods of maximum splendor and, as an avant-garde city that it was, it decided to face the problem of isolation and care of those affected by one of the many epidemics which, with a certain frequency, they showed up at the gates of the city.
It was thus decided to surround a square area of sixteen hectares with four very long porticoes and a moat that would accentuate the isolation of what could be a source of contagion for the city. In The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni describes her like this: « «Let the reader imagine the lazzaretto enclosure, populated with sixteen thousand plague victims; that space is all cluttered, some with huts and shacks, some with carts, some with people; those two endless flights of porticoes, on the right and on the left, full, crowded with languishing or confused corpses, on sacks, or on straw; […] and here and there, a coming and going, a stopping, a running, a bending, a getting up, of convalescents, of frenetic people, of servants".
Probably, due to the enormous number of plague victims, during the Manzonian plague what seemed to be a very efficient organization had collapsed which provided, around a large clear space, the hospitalization of the sick in 280 ventilated rooms placed under the porches. The division by quadrant was also rigid: the sick were in one, the people in quarantine because they were suspicious were in another, the recovered were in a third quadrant and the staff who had to manage the enormous structure were in the fourth. In the center there was an altar on which masses were celebrated which could be followed by all the people present.
It was San Carlo Borromeo who, in 1576, commissioned Pellegrino Tibaldi to design a church which however had the same characteristics as the pre-existing altar. Thus was born Santa Maria della Sanità, a church "without walls", because it was entirely surrounded by open porticoes which allowed the entire community present in the large enclosure of the lazaret to participate in the rites that were officiated.
With the French Revolution the church was deconsecrated and the open spaces under the porticoes were filled with brick walls which put an end to that «structure open on all four sides" that San Carlo had wanted. The choice to opt for a traditional building was also confirmed at the end of the 19th century, when the church was consecrated again. On the other hand, the enclosure of the lazaretto was no longer there and in place of the large open spaces surrounding the church there was a network of streets.
It is curious to observe how, since 2015, coinciding with the beginning of the restoration work which made the church accessible again, there has been a progressive transformation of the street which acts as a pronaos to the church, into a real Milanese Gay Street where everyone in the afternoons and every evening the diverse LGBT* population meets for those very Milanese aperitifs or for those quick evening lunches where plans for the rest of the night are made. Unfortunately, at those times, the church of San Carlo remains hermetically closed, given that the opening hours are reduced to three hours every morning, and that the only ceremonies are two masses celebrated at 10.00 on Tuesday and Friday.
It is certainly not the situation of a Church that really wants to be a "Outgoing church” and this is why Guado and the Giovani del Guado proposed to the parish priest of Santa Francesca Romana (the parish of which the church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto is part) to help him in organizing some moments of prayer to be proposed in the evening hours.
The first will be next March 10th at 9pm. The doors of the Church of San Carlo will open and those who sit on the tables overlooking Via Lecco will hear songs resonating behind those walls which, once upon a time, weren't even there.
The dream we have is to ideally demolish the walls that were built during the French Revolution, in order to give those who find themselves outside the church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto the possibility of entering and, perhaps, listening through the words he will hear, the specific word that God has to say to him in that moment..
If this happens to even just one person from the LGBT+ community, then, within the spaces of the ancient Lazzaretto, the dream that Saint Charles had when he decided to build that church will come true once again: to allow anyone to meet God without stopping in front of walls that shouldn't even be there and that each of us must try to break down once and for all.
> Poster of the prayer meetings in the Church of S. Carlo in Via Lecco in Milan
