MMiriam Gallifuoco is 23 years old, she is Italian, and she arrived at the Loppiano Youth Project in October, 2023. It’s not her first experience in the little town. Today, she is doing Civil Service there, helping to promote a culture of welcome and fraternity.
“There were many things in my life that I had never delved into. That is, I only experienced them because they happened. I followed the philosophy: as long as you don’t ask the question, the problem doesn’t exist…“. This, at least, was the case until March 18, 2023, when Miriam Gallifuoco, 22 years old, originally from Gorgonzola, a town in the Milan suburbs, visited Loppiano for the first time in her life. She was invited by a priest from her parish, Father Carlo Seno.
She is a very busy young woman. She studied educational sciences and is about to enroll in her master’s program. She works as a support teacher in a school. She grew up in the parish, where she is a youth group leader, and with her sister, she is responsible for the choir at the Sunday morning Mass. But she is going through a crisis: she dreams of becoming an educator but was recently forced to leave a volunteer position she had in a juvenile detention center. “This completely threw me off about my future. ‘I’m working in a school, but I feel like my path is somewhere else,’ I kept thinking, ‘What am I doing with my life?'”
She arrived in Loppiano accompanied by these doubts. “When I got here,” she recalls, lighting up, “I met young people from all over the world, more or less my age, who had a thousand questions about their lives. But unlike me, they didn’t avoid them and had chosen to ‘sit with them,’ giving themselves time to reflect.”
That weekend left her with a lot of joy, a great inner drive, but also a bit of nostalgia. So she returned for the Youth Festival on May 1st. “I booked right away and made my best friend come with me,” she says, laughing. “And here I found the people I had met before, who, even though almost two months had passed, still remembered me! It seemed incredible to me!”
Her friend also had a good time, but wasn’t as captivated by the experience as she was. While still in the little town, one of the Korean girls she had become friends with suggested she come back and stay for a few weeks. “Yeah,” Miriam replied, “why not?”
That’s how she discovered she could live in Loppiano and participate in the Youth Project. After finishing school, she set off south again, determined to spend two weeks in the little town.
“Upon my arrival,” she recalls, “they put me to work welcoming visitors, and I didn’t know anything about the Focolare Movement!” To prepare, she was given a book in which she discovered Chiara Lubich’s ideas for the first time. “I was really struck by this idea of love that is intrinsic in each one of us. I was also searching from a faith perspective. Yes, I went to the parish, to church… but why? Just because I liked it, or because I had taken on a commitment?” she admits.
The two weeks turned into three. Miriam immersed herself in the life of the little town. That particular way of living together, characterized by welcome and listening, a shared life that leads to being a “home” for one another.
“During those days, I walked a lot, and while walking, I reflected: ‘How can I ask a teenager, who comes from a difficult situation, or a young person in the parish, to question their life, to challenge themselves in their faith, if I haven’t done it myself first? No. If being an educator means being a witness, then I must live these things myself first!'””».
So, after returning home, she made a decision: to leave her job and postpone enrolling in the master’s program, in order to spend several months in the little town, continuing her experience with the Youth Project. With the blessing of her parents and even the support of the principal at the school where she worked, she arrived in Loppiano for the fourth time on October 9, 2023.
“It hasn’t always been easy, but I’m growing in many ways,” she reflects as she looks back. “In my relationship with myself, getting to know myself better; in how I relate to others, also accepting their weaknesses; and with God, who is not someone distant from my life but a real presence. I’m learning to see God in the other person I meet every day, and to trust in Him: I can and must do my part, but by trusting in God.”
While in Loppiano, Miriam also had the opportunity to apply to do Civil Service in the little town, continuing to work in welcoming children, teenagers, and young people: “By doing this work, I have the chance, every day, to give back the little seed that was planted in me. And I think that if even just one person, among all those who pass through here, one day asks themselves the same questions I asked myself, then all my work will have been worth it!”
