Our strength is in the wheel

1 October 2023. Don Piero Albanesi’s inauguration speech

“On the first Sunday in October 2005, I prostrated myself on the marble of this floor to be consecrated deacon. Today, the first Sunday in October 18 years later, I am back here, in this place that preserves the memory of more than a thousand years of history of our beloved city, as a servant and parish priest of this distinguished collegiate church and of the entire city.

I was accompanied on foot from my community in Bonascola, the youngest church in the Vicariate, with which I grew up as a man and as a pastor, to the oldest mother church. It is a joy to be here with my mother, my family members, new and old friends, and my brother priests entrusted to the custody of our beloved Bishop Mario. It is all beautiful, like these stones, and it is all beautiful because we are certain that we are here – I for one, with you – not to occupy space but to generate processes.

There are two mottos that have guided me so far and that I want to confirm here with you: prayer and sacrifice for the service I have experienced in Catholic Action, and placing my honour in deserving trust, which is the first Scout law.

The decision to set up a new parish entity for the city of Carrara is in fact a return to the origins for this community, which until less than a century ago was a single parish where serving priests, united in a chapter, took charge of three things: governance, care of people expressed as care of souls, and the proper management of economic resources. These are the three characteristics that must be held together for us to grow, for the dream of being united to make us feel enriched, away from the logic of doing it alone to do it better, an offence against the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Governance, care for people and management of resources that will not be sustained by a clerical church, but by a group of lay and consecrated persons, who will study, discern and choose for the good of the entire city and not only for their home parish community. A union that promotes the good of all, in which everyone gives the best of themselves. Not keeping history sterile, but making history, generating love for our city in each of its members and guests.

First of all, I want to express my love for these stones and for this place, as an expression of the greatest love for the living stones that are you, and which I have already had the opportunity to meet in these days, and I thank you deeply for being here today, for the service rendered by many of you to make this a moment of celebration for the entire community, starting with Don Raffaello who welcomed me like a father, with his untiring enthusiasm, and ending with Don Giuseppe Carpena.

Don Giuseppe, born in 1928, the oldest priest in the entire diocese, who said his first Mass here in his parish in 1952, recently told me about the time he saved the parish priest Fr Spadoni from arrest by the Germans in 1944, by mediating with the Wehrmacht command stationed at Padula. As he told me, I saw him as a 16-year-old boy in 1944 running among these marbles to defend his parish priest.

This Duomo that opens up to view, without a square, almost as if to amaze, seems to say that, as in life, first encounters happen then one wonders about the meaning, first one is amazed then one becomes passionate. This Duomo is the synthesis of an encounter: Parmesan mastery in the portal and capitals, Lucchese style in the oldest part, Romanesque, up to the flowery Gothic of the Pisan school and the typically Genoese tower. This Duomo says that the suburbs, like our province, compared to the cities, can be a synthesis and integration of the best.

Here artists, architects, stonemasons, decorators, textile craftsmen and silversmiths have left their contribution. This place is a sign of an enrichment that has come from outside and has become our identity. Never be afraid of those who come from outside, but instead be afraid of not having a sense of identity.

I would like to pause on three of the dozens of details of this place, admirably described by the late master and enthusiast Giancarlo Paoletti in his text The Stone Bible. The first is the offering of Melchizedek, the high priest, to Abraham and Sarah, on the outer capital. The patriarch of faith receives the offering of blessed bread from a man more important than himself, but he receives it from the hands of his wife Sarah, a woman who welcomes this bread that she will share with her husband. In our relationships, there is always someone more important than us, who gives himself to us, generating amazement: the gift is to be shared, it is a loaf of bread for several people.

All’interno, un altro meraviglioso incontro, l’Annunciazione conservata in questa chiesa da quasi settecento anni. Un messaggero, questo è l’angelo, che irrompe nella vita di una giovane, in questo caso con i tratti e le caratteristiche di una cortigiana medioevale: una giovane donna dai capelli sciolti, emancipata perché sapeva leggere. Lui entra nella sua vita a passo deciso, e prima di chiedere qualcosa, le fa vedere quello che è: piena di Grazia, con il Signore nel suo intimo. In altre parole, le dice: sei una meraviglia, il Signore stesso è con te! Il sì di Maria è il lasciarsi sedurre dalla forza e dalla presenza di Dio stesso. Sembrano – non me ne vorranno gli amici che vengono da fuori – dirsi… da reta a me, mi’ com a son bel, e lei che risponde cos ‘t vò, con il piglio nostro carrarino, e però dentro ha già detto di sì, con generosità.

Inside, another wonderful encounter, the Annunciation preserved in this church for almost seven hundred years. A messenger, this is the angel, who bursts into the life of a young woman, in this case with the features and characteristics of a medieval courtesan: a young woman with loose hair, emancipated because she could read. He enters her life with a firm step, and before asking her anything, he shows her what she is: full of Grace, with the Lord in her innermost being. In other words, he tells her: you are a wonder, the Lord himself is with you! Mary’s yes is letting herself be seduced by the power and presence of God himself. They seem to say to each other – my friends from the outside will not mind – ‘da reta a me, mi’ com a son bel’, and she answers what she wants, with the manner of our carter, but inside she has already said yes, with generosity.

It is the “yes” to the proposal of a full life, in which to realise what is already written, it is the confident “yes” to embarking on a journey such as the one that takes her over the mountains towards her cousin Elisabeth, which is still recounted in a capital work by Niccolò di Wiligelmo, dating back to the early decades of the 1100s, and which emerges from the half-light of the building to be illuminated again and again by the light entering through the side door. Two women intertwine their hands, embracing each other, shrugging their shoulders, almost smiling at each other, and they are a woman too young and one too old: they are the image of the Church, always called to generate, beyond its estimated strength and possibilities. Next to them are Abraham who leaves his land and seeks alliance with the Lord, Zechariah with his silence, Joseph comforted in his doubt.

That bread of Sarah is the pan fat ‘n cà of the Carraran women, that embrace between Mary and Elizabeth is the embrace of our grandmothers and mothers, that yes is the perseverance of our women up to us, it is a passage of gen- erations, those who have transmitted the faith to us, to me, up to the women of 7 July 1944 who defended the city.

I want to name a few, to remember them all: Ines, Idea, Lisetta, Alfredina and Giovanna Nardi, for everyone Aunt Gio. It is these women, with their prominence, who gave Don Raffaello 37 years ago the list of the sick to be placed on the altar among the offertory gifts, which today we have with new people brought back to the altar, as a true relic of that Christ of flesh that we encounter after adoring him in his true body on the altar, as our Don Raffaello tried to live out every day in his visits to the elderly and the sick.

Our city is made up of resilient, tenacious, true and authentic people, discerning in their judgement, a city that may look with a hint of envy at the well-being of others with fewer resources than ours, but a city that does not sell out. Which teaches us, with its history not only artistic and cultural but even more human and relational, that it needs to be loved, cared for, without waiting for someone else to do it. A city that we are all too easily inclined to denigrate for certain faults, that often still seems to us to have much to value.

Our identity depends on us, in our history there is the gift. I recognise it in my ancestors, in my father Luciano, in my paternal grandparents, my grandmother Elide among the first female accountants to come out of the Zaccagna institute in the 1920s, my grandfather Piero Albanesi, in charge of the town’s gardens and public greenery, my grandfather Mario del Sarto who, out of passion in Mortarola, sculpted an entire mountain, and my grandmother Giovanna, with all the beauty and certainty that only a grandmotherly housewife can give.

To all those who are afraid of the future, I say that those who live the present in its fullness because they know how to appreciate the past are not afraid of tomorrow.

Let us begin to compete in appreciating each other, let us dream, let us plan, let us seek resources, and we will be like Mary and Elizabeth who, on meeting, will make the child inside them dance. We will also try, Fr Mario, Fr Cesare, Fr Luigi and Fr Giovanni, to trust the Gospel that invites us to go further, to feel that this challenge takes nothing from anyone but enriches everyone.

We are not shepherds and you flock, no! We are all flock, with one shepherd, Jesus Christ, who does not divide but unites, who guides and consoles with his strength. We are all citizens of the same dignity, with different opportunities but great in the same way, called to offer ourselves for the change we want to see realised around us.

I am here to say my simple and small yes for the building of the common home, and to continue to bear the witness of faith and passion for humanity.

Today begins a new chapter, which will be fine until someone comes up with a better one. So, again, thank you for your presence to all of you, for what you represent but above all what you are, thank you for feeling involved in this new page of our church in Carrara – never say Carrara!

Wishing that I could be a little like the beauty of these stones, and that is – as Michelangelo used to say – remove what is extra to bring out the wonder they contain. I would like us to feel as our city motto expresses: Fortitudo mea in rota, on the move, beyond prejudice, beyond the always done, open to exploring new paths.

Our strength is in the wheel, our motto says, and so does the cathedral’s rose window. Our strength is movement, with a sense of humility and justice, which like freedom are never out of fashion. With these sentiments I begin my life journey with you and for you’.