Come le vite dei Santi non mi hanno aiutato ad accogliere chi ha più bisogno

Reflections by Carl Siciliano taken from his book Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth (Making Space: Three Decades of Fighting for a Bed, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth), publisher Convergent, 2024, chapter 1, paragraph I, freely translated by the volunteers of the Gionata Project

I met Ali three years before he died, on November 30, 1994. It was my first day as director of SafeSpace, a newly opened day center (in New York) that offered food, medical care, support groups and a host of other essential services to homeless adolescents. (…)

I had decided to spend the first days of work immersing myself in the centre's activities, to get to know my young clients. After lunch, I went down to the large community room, where eight long tables were arranged in the shape of a Greek cross.

I sat there, surrounded by a dozen boys and girls, they ranged in age from their late teens to early twenties, they were mostly black or Latino, many were wrapped in heavy winter coats (and some of them were LGBT+ boys and girls). I introduced myself and asked if they would like to talk to me about their experiences at the SafeSpace center. What did they appreciate? What could we improve?

A young girl wasted no time in taking up my invitation. “This place sucks!” he exclaimed, his voice shrill and full of anger. “The staff don't care about us. None of you really care about us! You're only here for the paycheck. You treat us with disdain, you don't lift a finger to help us. And the food is crap. You don't care! You don't give a damn!"

I looked around the room and saw some kids getting agitated and uncomfortable. Not wanting to react defensively, I forced myself to remain calm and asked the girl her name.

“Tangie,” he replied.

“Tangie, I'm so sorry to hear that you had such negative experiences at SafeSpace,” I said gently. “I will do my best to improve the situation. But I'm curious: how long have you been coming here?”

“Since half past eleven.”

“Half past eleven today?” I asked.

“Yes, I arrived for the reception just before lunch.”

It was just after 1pm. I didn't know what Tangie had experienced in the 90 minutes since she arrived, but it was hard to believe she'd had enough time to make an accurate judgment about SafeSpace and the dedication of the staff.

More likely, I was listening to the pain born of a lifetime of trauma.

After twelve years spent helping homeless people in soup kitchens, shelters and residential facilities, I had learned that entering their lives meant opening up to pain, meeting people marked by poverty, abuse, mental illness, guilt and inevitable anger. that resulted from it.

It also meant looking beyond the surface to try to understand who they really were. When I listened to Tangie without contradicting her, her anger seemed to subside. She sat and listened intently as other young people talked about the medical care, food, showers and laundry services SafeSpace offers.

Nobody was particularly enthusiastic about it, but it was clear that we were meeting some of their most pressing needs.

Reflecting on Tangie's verbal outburst, I thought about how the hagiographies of the Saints that had led me to this work had not prepared me for the reality.

As a teenage convert to Catholicism, I had immersed myself in the lives of saints.

I felt inspired reading about St. Martin of Tours cutting off half of his cloak to give to a naked beggar, or St. Francis of Assisi physically embracing a leper full of festering scars.

In both hagiographies, after the saint had helped the needy person, he disappeared and the saint realized that he was actually God.

In real life, however, I quickly learned that people in trouble rarely disappear for good reasons, and their needs are too vast to be solved with half a cloak or a hug.

Original text: Making Room: Lives of the Saints