Of Men and Mary Read online

  Already a member of the spiritual association of a boys club called the “Catholic Action,” I became more fervent in my desire to help Jesus save souls. In Italy at that time, each parish had its own Catholic Action group for women and for men. This national organization encouraged young people to become soldiers for Christ, to work actively and aggressively for the Kingdom of God, for the Gospel, to approach friends and fellow students and invite them to return to Church and to a greater closeness with Christ.

  Catholicism was not as fought against then, no other religions being in view. You were a poor Catholic, a rich Catholic, a fervent Catholic, or a negligent Catholic, but you were Catholic. Laxity was pretty common among young people. Using amenities, jokes, and a friendly approach, I wasn’t afraid to meet people, especially my fellow students: “Hi Giuseppe, how about going to Mass on Sunday? Oh, come on now, I’ll pick you up.” Often, I’d ask the greatest or most important question one could ask a fellow human being—a question I still ask today: “Hey, by the way, are you in God’s grace?” I invited friends to go to Confession and even tried to lure people away from going into houses of prostitution. The thought of a soul being lost, deeply pained me; I felt Jesus’s heart being pierced inside my own.

  One day, the director of the drama club, a Salesian priest, came to me and said, “Paolo, read this script.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll read it and get back to you.” After I did, I said to him, “Um . . . I don’t have a role in this! This is all serious.”

  “I want you to take the lead role.”

  “You must be kidding. I step on stage and everybody laughs.”

  “You’ll memorize your role this time, and we’ll make a go of it.”

  “It can’t be,” I thought to myself.

  The title of this drama was Il Grande Silencio (The Great Silence), a three-act play about a saintly priest who spends thirty-two years in prison for another man’s crime in order to keep the seal and secret of the Sacrament of Penance. I had to borrow a cassock from one of the Salesian fathers to play the role. I took it home, and after Mamma brushed it, ironed it, and put it on me, she exclaimed with a big smile, “Eee! How beautiful you look as a priest!” I enjoyed her compliment only because I liked to collect admiration and applause; but I didn’t have any drive for a vocation to the priesthood, not even a symptom.

  I was eighteen when I performed this drama in Lea’s parish. Afterward, she echoed with admiration my mother’s words to me: “Oh, how good you look as a priest!” I quickly forgot her comment, but I didn’t forget her.

  Not long after that, my spiritual director asked me, “Paolo, how is your heart?”

  Avoiding the depth of the question, I responded, “Okay, Father.”

  He probed further, “Is there anyone who attracts you?”

  “Oh, oh,” I answered evasively. “Nobody’s there yet.”

  But his wisdom and recent knowledge prompted him to go a bit further. “Can I name somebody?”

  “Oh? Can you do that?”

  “Would you like me to?”

  Instantly curious, I asked him, “Who could it be?”

  “I am not permitted to tell, unless you ask.”

  And so, with a sudden excitement, I said, “Oh yes, I’m asking, I’m asking.”

  “Lea Giusti.” I was shocked since she had already made a rather deep impact on me.

  “Yes, yes,” I said and then told him, “Please do not say anything, unless she asks.”

  He smiled and said, “She already did.” Lea, also being a spiritual directee of Father, had obviously asked of him the same favor.

  When I left Father’s room and dropped into the Salesian community chapel for a little greeting to the Blessed Sacrament, I saw Lea there praying. She turned to me and smiled. I smiled back. So Father not only played the spiritual and emotional director, but also ended up being a matchmaker.

  In previous interviews and encounters with Father, he had given me a book to read titled, A Loro Che Hanno Vent’Anni (To Those Who Are Twenty) by a Hungarian bishop, which I felt proud to read because I was a little over eighteen. One sentence, quoted from an eminent French writer, struck me: “There exists in the world a maiden whom God has destined to you. Do not live in such a way as to bring a heap of ruins in exchange for her flourishing youth!”

  That passage had struck me profoundly. I realized that if God knew the number of our hairs, as Jesus said, would he not obviously know who would be the ideal mate for a marriage? When I shared this passage with Father, he commented, “Besides respecting our freedom, the Lord knows what would be best for us. So, Paolo, do not look for your mate in a dancing hall, but in a religious environment.” And so, seeking a life partner, I continued to go to daily Mass, and allowing an occasional distraction after Communion, I would look at the people coming back from the altar rail. That’s where I discovered Lea’s personality, her devotion, her Christian life. I saw her often carrying a rosary in her hand and learned she was a member of a group called “The Daughters of Mary.” She was tall and gentle, sweet and very calm, with dark, softly waved hair and thoughtful brown eyes. Keeping an eye on her and engaging her in conversation, I became increasingly interested. Eventually, I fell in love.

  One day I met Lea in the lobby of her apartment complex. Being somewhat shy, I began to state a formal, solemn declaration to her, which came out in rather vague terms. With a rapidly beating heart, I said, “I would like to be your friend, your special friend . . . if it does not offend you, I would like . . . one of these days . . . to have our friendship blessed. I mean, eventually an engagement ceremony, or something like that.” I looked at her hopefully and could see tears gathering in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, several times. I felt overwhelmed with emotion. In a joyful daze, I accompanied her as she walked to her church to teach preschool. On our way, as we passed by the children’s houses, Lea called them out by name to follow her. I grew ecstatic at the sight of this young adult woman, as tall as I, surrounded by a group of little children, with a radiance of innocence comparable to theirs.

  A couple days later, I continued my proposal and asked Lea, “Is that really all right? Would you accept me as a possible candidate?”

  She beamed, “Yes, Paolo, of course!” I never did get up the courage to say the word “marriage.”

  Lea surprised me shortly after that as I accompanied her home. We were walking along a street in partial darkness after we had both gone to Confession. Italy had just entered into World War II, and the lights were dimmed for protection against bombing. Suddenly she stopped, looked at me, and said, “Paolo, if you have a vocation to the priesthood, do not let me stand in your way. I would go begging in order to keep you in the seminary.”

  I answered in mixed humor, “Hey, that’s fancy. If you want to get rid of your boyfriend, put him in the seminary.”

  Looking at me seriously and lovingly, she said, “I mean it. God is first.” I never forgot that episode and often wondered what made her come up with that statement soon after I had proposed to her.

  In college, I was studying the science of metallurgy, a program sponsored by the huge steel mill factory in Terni. It was 1942. World War II had long begun, and the demands of the war, specifically the increased production of war material, called for the employment of metallurgical engineers. Ours was the first college in Italy that taught metallurgy. The famous Breda Company, which manufactured military products—from armored tanks, to machine guns, airplanes, bombs, projectiles, and all the rest—asked my college for two, newly graduated metallurgical engineers. A friend of mine and myself were selected to move to Milan to work in the Breda steel mill. We accepted the request.

  A few days before I had to leave for Milan, Lea and I celebrated our engagement to each other. We were nineteen. Our two families gathered with friends at my house, and Father blessed us in an engagement ceremony. It felt almost like a betrothal, being so formal, religious, solemn, and very joyful—albeit with a little sha
de of sadness, given I would soon be over 300 miles away. After the ceremony, I hugged my beloved to say goodbye, and I was hoping to kiss her. But, with her instinctive sense of modesty, she gently turned her face and offered me her cheek.

  During my stay in Milan, we wrote notes of affection to each other almost daily. Of course, God was intensely present in the beginning, middle, and end of each posted letter. My mom wrote to me, too, though not as often as Lea, and in my correspondence, there was no question about my deep love for both of them. Meanwhile, they grew very close to one another. During the week, Lea often rode her bicycle over to my mom’s to see her and chitchat.

  In Milan, bombings had already taken place, so a general apprehension hung in the air. I had seen the effect of British bombing in the city: broken buildings and devastated areas. In Terni, every day at 10 o’clock a.m., the alarm sounded, alerting people of this potential call to enter the bomb shelter. My sister, Letizia, and her six-month-old baby girl, Rosanna, numbered among many who had already moved to one of the little towns outside the city to avoid the danger of bombing.

  When I returned to Terni for a visit, I wanted to surprise Lea and didn’t tell her exactly the date of my arrival. First, I went to see Mom. As I hugged and kissed her, she looked overjoyed and so relieved to see me. Her eyes filled with tears, and I swallowed mine. It felt beautiful to be in her arms. Then I went to see Lea, who lived on the third floor of an apartment building. I knocked on the door of the downstairs entrance, and she called out, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” But I didn’t say anything. She began to descend the staircase as I began to climb. My heart was pounding, and I said to myself, “I’m going to kiss her this time.” After all, I was officially her fiancé. When we met, she burst into joyful exclamations, “Oh Paolo! It’s Paolo!” and we ran into each other’s arms. I made an attempt to kiss her. And in spite of all the joy and excitement, she turned her cheek, smiling, and I kissed her there. I would have to wait. This describes her deep chastity and purity, which at that time was not unusual. Her kisses were saved for marriage.

  The next day was filled with indescribable joy. Lea and I spent as much of our time together as we could. We talked about our correspondence and shared our spiritual lives and readings. I described my life up in Milan, and she told me of her days in Terni. She knew that I had gone to Mass every morning to a church near my apartment in Milan, and in a moment of beautiful intimacy, I told her, “The closest I ever get to you is when I receive Communion. At approximately the same time in the morning, when I was receiving Communion in Milan, you were also receiving Communion here. Jesus within you was also within me, and in that moment, I was intensely united to both of you.” She beamed, and her eyes filled with joyful tears.

  The following day, we went to Mass, and then I accompanied Lea as we rode our bicycles to the supermarket. I remember her looking especially sweet that day, wearing a blue apron-like jumper with a pant skirt, over a yellow shirt with brown polka dots. It was August 11, 1943. The war had imposed ration coupons, and long, slow-moving lines filled the market. I left Lea there, knowing she would have to stay for a long time, and rushed downtown to pick up my graduation picture, having left for Milan before it was issued.

  As I was coming back, the alarm sounded—a terrible, terrible sound. In a rush of adrenaline, I hastened home at a furious speed. Bursting through the front door, I yelled, “Ma! Ma! Let’s go. Let’s go! We need to get into the shelter!” Always with a mother’s heart, she thought first of a paralyzed man named Charlie, who lived on the fourth floor, but was spending his days in our first-floor apartment, in case the alarm sounded.

  “You go ahead,” she said, “and take Charlie with you.”

  “Ma,” I exhorted. “Ma, come on! Let’s go. Let’s go!”

  “I’ll close the gas,” she answered, “and I’ll get the overcoats so that you children don’t catch cold in the shelters.”

  “No! Let’s go!”

  As I assisted Charlie out the front door, I saw my sister with her little baby, Rosanna, in her arms. Immediately, I asked her, “Letizia, why are you here?”

  And she said casually, “Oh, I came down to do some shopping.”

  I felt so apprehensive inside, but the others didn’t. They moved sluggishly, never having experienced a bombing. I said to her quickly, “Let’s go. Let’s go!”

  “I’ll wait for Mom.”

  “No, let’s go!”

  She remained. So I left with Charlie. We hurried through the gate of the apartment complex; then we crossed the street to a shelter entrance just across from us, hidden under the mezzanine of a large school building. The shelters were well-made tunnels, fourteen yards below the surface, brick-lined, with vertical well escapes connecting to the surface in case blockage occurred. After rounding the side of the U-shaped school to reach the back entrance, I accompanied Charlie into the building and down the first flight of stairs in order to enter the shelter with a crowd of other people. As our feet touched the pavement of the mezzanine lobby, the unthinkable happened.

  A whistling roar of bombs and an enormous, prolonged, explosive blast shook the earth violently. That beautiful, sunny, August day became pitch black. Dust and powder prevented any light from entering the long, narrow, mezzanine windows. The long earthquake finally subsided, followed by the crumbling of debris. Then silence—a silence broken only by the diminishing roar of the American bomber’s engines leaving behind their deadly cargo.

  In the darkness, I began to trace my way back up the stairway. I pushed open the door and held my breath. The darkness was clearing. I could see broken buildings, dust, and nearby, a bomb hole. Close to me, on the left side of the school building, tangent to the path of the school’s back door, I noticed a large circular crater. I advanced a little. As I hesitantly stepped toward it, I saw the body of a woman barely emerging from the dirt at the edge of the crater. “Oh, My God!” I exclaimed, wondering who she was, who she had been.

  As if walking inside a nightmare, I continued forward along a chain-link fence bordering the school. And then a few yards ahead, by the fence at the entrance gate, I saw many bodies of women, about ten or twelve, piled up along the side of the building. They had obviously been running to find safety in the shelter, but too late. As I stepped closer, I immediately recognized a woman with her tiny baby still clutched under her breast. The back of the baby’s head had blown open, and the contents had spilled out onto the ground. It was my sister and her child. In shock, I turned my eyes to look at the corpse next to her. And then I cried out, “Ma questa é Mamma mia!” (“But this one is my mother!”) Falling to the ground, I knelt next to her body which lay on its side. As I rolled her over onto her back, her right arm separated from her body. With a trembling hand, I cleaned the brownish dust off her face, and a surge of contempt burst in my heart toward the killers. I wanted to curse the bombers, but a deep urging of Christian pity arose from my emotions, and looking up at the sky I called out, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” And I meant it. “They’re soldiers,” I thought, hanging my head. “They are only doing what they are told.” Still kneeling next to my mother’s corpse, I raised my eyes again to heaven, to the Virgin Mary. Sensing her spiritually present, I cried out in anguish, “Now, you have to be my mom!”

  Slowly, I pulled myself up to a standing position and looked at the other bodies of women, angled and heaped along the way, to see if any were still alive. But none of them were. One body was totally dismembered. I continued to look around. “Lord,” I said with desperate hope, “leave me at least Lea.” As I heard the distant engines of another bomber’s formation approaching, I made my way back into the shelter and began searching for Lea and my two brothers, Giancarlo, age seventeen, and Alberto, age nine. I asked if anyone had seen them, and someone told me that they had seen my brothers. The shelter was in very dim light, and eventually I saw their figures coming toward me down a long, dark underground tunnel. I ran to them, rejoiced, and hugged them close. It was
a bitter relief that at least they were still around.

  “Did you see Mom?” they asked.

  I didn’t have the courage to tell them she was dead. I only mumbled, “Let’s pray for her.”

  Another wave of bombing fell on another area of the city farther away, and then silence. After some time, I took my brothers out of the shelter, and with a sunken heart, I brought them over to Mom’s corpse. Alberto looked at Mom, knelt, and put his hand forward to clean the rest of the dust from her face. As he felt her cold, stiff body, he asked, looking up at me, “Paolo, where is Mamma?”

  I answered, “She is in heaven.”

  “Are we going to see her soon?” he asked.

  “That’s up to God,” I answered.

  As I accompanied them back to the shelter, somebody told me, “Paolo, we saw Lea coming with your mother.”

  I cried, “Oh no!” and ran back outside by a corpse I’d seen, half-buried at the edge of the bomb hole. Frantically, I began to move the dirt and saw an arm emerge, then part of a bag. Noticing a blue garment on the body, I ripped it to see what was underneath. There I saw yellow fabric with brown polka dots. Sure enough, it was my Lea. “Oh no! Oh no!” I cried out. “Not Lea!” My desolation was too strong for tears.

  I continued to unearth her body. She was in a kneeling forward position with one arm around her face and another still holding onto her purse and shopping bag. Her face, protected by her arm, was still clean, pale, with only a little streak of blood that ran from the right edge of her mouth. A sharp sense of despair, loneliness, and searing pain cut into my heart as I stared at her lifeless features. Eventually, wrapping my arms underneath her, I lifted her up and laid her next to my mom’s body. Then I rushed to the apartment to gather some sheets so I could cover their bodies.