“Every migrant is a child of god” Sister Lina, a scalabrinian missionary for 57 years
It was 2016 when two brothers, Ahmed and Fadil (fictitious names), arrived at the port of Reggio Calabria after being rescued at sea by the Coast Guard. Fadil was only 15 years old, has been beaten, had wounds and bruises all over his body, and needed to be taken to the hospital, but he did not want to. He knew that if he left his older brother, he would be transferred who knows where and would never see him again. It was at this moment of desperation that Fadil met Sister Lina Guzzo, a Scalabrinian missionary who daily welcomes migrants arriving at the port. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to the hospital with you,” Sister Lina said. Throughout the night, Fadil cried in despair as Sister Lina repeatedly called the Coast Guard to make sure Ahmed was not taken away to some facility. “My arms were scarred by his nails, holding me and telling me not to move away,” Sister Lina recalls.
In the morning Fadil was discharged and Sister Lina accompanied him to the port. Ahmed did not move from there all night. The two brothers hug each other, kiss, cry with joy. “Everyone should have witnessed that moment, even some politicians. These boys had faced the abandonment of their family, the journey along the desert, the imprisonment in Libya, the violence, the death at sea of their comrades, and then the fear of never seeing each other again once it seemed they had made it. In that embrace there was all humanity, there was all hope for a new life. Sometimes it would be enough to have respect for the pain of others. Underneath that skin of another color, there is the great gift of a life received, there are children of God,” says Sister Lina, who as a missionary has spent 57 years alongside those who emigrate: from Italians in Switzerland to Kosovo refugees in Albania and African migrants in Portugal and Sicily and Calabria.
“No matter where they come from, in their words there is always homesickness, family, suffering, but also hope,” she said. Scalabrini told the missionaries who left for the Americas to bring to the Italian emigrants the smile of the homeland and the comfort of faith. I am in the homeland today and I welcome people from other homelands. It doesn’t matter if they are Catholic or Muslim or Hindu: they have a faith, they believe in someone above them who is present in their lives. We have received from Bishop and Saint John Baptist Scalabrini the charism of serving migrants, we have to know humanity in order to be able to accompany them and know ourselves in order to be truly missionary with these people.”
Now Sister Lina lives in Messina, where she helps the Sri Lankan and Filipino communities integrate: teaching kids and accompanying foreign children on their life journey. For years, however, she was “the animator of the port of Reggio Calabria.” That’s what the volunteers who together with her and the other sisters welcomed migrants called her. “As many as 900 people arrive in a day, many were unaccompanied minors. The night before, they would notify us of their arrival and we would be there at dawn loaded with slippers, clothes, brioches, juice. We would shake their hands, make eye contact and ask about their family. With gestures we would understand each other and try to take away their fear. Often they did not even know where they were. I would spend the day and night with them in tents or in the hospital.” Sister Lina remembers one day when she was passing among the newly landed boys distributing supplies. “One of them looked at me with wide eyes and repeated, ‘I’m hungry.’ They would arrive thirsty and hungry, but I had just finished the brioches. I was very sorry and one of his traveling companions then said to me in Portuguese, “Mother, don’t worry because from today we eat freedom.” This sentence has remained a carved stone in my heart and made me realize how important it is for them to arrive here, in democratic countries, and build a dignified life.
The most difficult years were those of the war in Kosovo. The Scalabrinian Missionary Sisters took in refugees in their home in Albania, Shkodra. “We housed 50 people, 36 were minors. I had to recognize people killed with their heads full of bullets. I witnessed the death of a woman, mother of a small child, who was shot in the back. When her husband came, I thought, “What do I do now, my God?” But after the discouragement and even fear comes faith, the knowledge that this is not the end of it. There I became aware that there is a God who gives you the strength to go on in your vocation.”
A choice Sister Lina would make again, “I could have been a mother and wife, but I experienced that when you give your life to God, He gives you a hundredfold.” Today it is 57 years since Sister Lina took the veil and will finally see the canonization of the one who has always been a father to her, John Baptist Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza: “I am vice-postulator of his canonization and I am grateful to Pope Francis who chose to give the Church a model like Scalabrini. It is a great gift that God gives to the refugees, the discarded, the rejected by the world who need to be welcomed and receive the comfort of faith.”
