"All the steps they brought me here." the Meeting of a gay boy with Francesco

Testimony of Luigi Testa* of his meeting with pope Francis

"All the steps I made in my life brought me here, now." This came to my mind, while I was waiting for the others that the Pope came to the hearing classroom.

All the steps I made in my life they had brought me there, at that moment. There was the thirteen -year -old Luigi who watched the images of the huge GMG vigil on Tor Vergata on TV in 2000, and he would have liked to be that boy who had managed to get on the big stage to start crying on the pope's knees, among its caresses. There was the Luigi child and teenager who wrote who knows how many letters to ask to be able to meet the Pope, first John Paul II, then Benedetto - and seemed impossible: always delicate, elegant answers, full of conveniences, but always little more than a "We are sorry."

All the steps I made in my life. There were all the people who, as a child, then as a boy, and then as an adult, had accompanied me in the faith, first inspired, then guiding me. There was the bishop of my childhood and adolescence: the day died when, at nineteen years, I went up to Milan to start university - a handover. I remember that in his house, in the kitchen, he had a photo of him, just bishop, with John Paul II, very young. He had his Franciscan smile a little sly, and very much sunglasses vintage who made me smile. Every time I looked at her, I got some envy.

All the steps he had made in his life, had brought the boy who looked at that photo in the cuisine of his bishop today. Also all the steps on the tortuous, tiring, fable, uneven paths of self -awareness, first, and of self -acceptance, later. To wait for the pope, I was there with a copy of the "Via crucis of a gay boy", and this is the child and boy Luigi, he would never, even remotely, imagined. In the end, the Lord keeps his promises - but for his paths, that we perhaps never thought.

And therefore, to wait for the pope, I was not only me, but there was a consortium of people, of encounters, affections, of hearts, of faces, who, in the steps I made in my life, have me attached to the heart. There was the first guy I kissed and the first guy I made with love with. There were many friends. There were - in a special place - the people of the Ford, the Young people from Guado, and all the people encountered in the network of Christians LGBT+: they were also the their passi, brave, strong, beautiful, to bring me there.

And of course there were the most recent steps, those made and crossed since, just under a year ago, don Sergio - he too was there, to many titles - he proposed me the madness to publish the Way of the cross that I was about to put in the pope's hands. There was the person I was in love with while that Way of the cross i wrote it, and that that "Way of the cross" it is also dedicated, "because she feels loved like this". There was the person in whose eyes I lost myself while that Way of the cross he went out and began to take his roads. Maybe it is the two who would have wanted to physically close, while I met the Pope; And I'm glad I had the courage to ask him to pray "for the guys I loved".

All the steps I made in my life brought me here, now, to talk to him up close - and while I was talking to him, I realized that I held a hand to tighten his arm. "Thanks for everything he is doing for homosexual people in the Church"; "We need to hear the Church as an ally of our happiness." And for his part a careful listening, without haste - despite the other people to meet and healthy. A look of encouragement and tenderness, like his words: "There is no shame". "There is a lot of work to do." «The Church is a mother; It is the clericalism that makes it stepmother ». While other words, his and mine, perhaps it is nice that they remain only ours.

To dispose of the emotion and put the thoughts in order, after the hearing - and after a big hug to Don Andrea, with a great 'thank you' - I entered the Basilica, and, following a little the path that my little devotions make me do every time in there, I went down to the crypt of the tombs of the popes. And there that word returned to my mind - "all the steps I made in my life brought me here, now" -, but this time it was the Church that said it. All the steps he made in his long life have brought it here, now, to a pope who receives a book in his hands that is titled Via crucis of a gay boy and that he says to me "there is no shame".

Paul VI, John Paul I, Benedict XVI, Pius XII - all steps. With their deviations, with their uncertainties, on its uncertain paths, perhaps intermittent, slow, tiring, fatigued, on disconnected paths, not without obstacles from within and from the outside - "it is humanity that has abandoned the Church or is the Church who abandoned humanity? "Eliot wondered; Maybe both - but all steps. Not only to me the Lord led - here and today, for his paths - to a landing that only a few years ago I would never have imagined. This is how it also happens for the Church.

There is only confidence in him and in his promise. It will make it, certainly also for our commitment, but with its paths, with its ways - that perhaps we do not imagine today - with its times.

"There is a time for all beings. But this time is not the same for everyone. The time of things is not the time of animals, and that of animals is not the time of humans. And above all and quite different from everything there is the time of God that everyone summarizes and overcomes them. The heart of God does not beat according to the rhythm of our heart ": Chiara of Assisi says it to a Francesco frightened by the disasters of his children, in The wisdom of a poor man, by Éloi Leclerc, who was one of the books that loved that bishop of when I was a boy, with the photo together with the Pope in the kitchen.

*Luigi Testa is the author of legal texts and writes for some national newspapers. “Via crucis of a gay boy"(Castelvecchi, 2024) is his first spiritual book, his other reflections are also published onGionata.org