Home » Naples, Archbishop Battaglia and the fight against criminals: “The Camorra is a shadow over the city, the challenge is to help young people to beat the underworld”

Naples, Archbishop Battaglia and the fight against criminals: “The Camorra is a shadow over the city, the challenge is to help young people to beat the underworld”

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NAPLES. «The Camorra is a shadow that obscures Naples. We have to tell ourselves without hypocrisy. And face our problems immediately, together, with a sense of responsibility, including the Church, called to leave the sacred precincts. So a new dawn will soon come. ” Monsignor Domenico Battaglia speaks, always for everyone Don Mimmo, a street priest whom Pope Francis has chosen as pastor of the Neapolitan archdiocese. The prelate has recently published the book “A blade of grass among the stones” (Rubbettino).

Your Excellency, what did you feel after knowing that you had been chosen by the Pope as pastor of a prestigious but also complex diocese like Naples?

“A profound sense of gratitude to the Lord and to Pope Francis who called me to serve a Christian community with an ancient history and a rich and complex present. Obviously, there was no lack of regret at having to leave the Church of Cerreto: the faces and stories that I met there remain in my heart, which I now open with joy also to the faces and stories of this Church, of this beautiful city. Furthermore, if the certainty that he who calls me to such a responsibility is not the one in whom I place all my hope, I would feel as if crushed by a task clearly superior to my strength ».

From the outskirts of the “last” to one of the most important dioceses in the world, from the drugstore squares to San Gennaro: what sense and meaning do you give to this journey of life and faith?

«My path as a priest and bishop is linked to the face of many young people, poor, marginalized, suffering: it is they who converted me to the logic of the Gospel, so different from that of the world. For this I feel deeply my own the words of Pope Francis: “I want a poor Church for the poor. They (…) know the suffering Christ. It is necessary that we all allow ourselves to be evangelized by them “(EG 198). On the day of my entry I told about Stefano, a boy with addiction problems who died of AIDS. The meeting with him, the embrace with him changed my life and his, teaching me the courage to live to the full, looking death in the face to embrace life. Trusting in the power of love. After all, it is also what a martyr does, even what San Gennaro did: do not fear death to embrace life. The meaning is all here: in love. That defeats all death. That awakens life ».

What are the tasks and mission of the archbishop of a diocese like the Neapolitan one?

“My task is to serve the Gospel, walking alongside the people of God, in the city, like a traveler, convinced that only together we can follow the one Master and Shepherd, Jesus. I have no ready-made projects or ready-made recipes but I am very clear that every pastoral plan, every concrete choice must be inspired by the Lord Jesus. My mission, the mission of every bishop is to be faithful to the Word, which in this time more than ever invites the Church to leave the sacred precincts, without fearing the winding roads and difficult, putting themselves at the service of the territory, starting from the last to reach everyone. An outgoing Church, poor, synodal, disciple of fragility, which knows how to make her own “the joys and hopes, sadness and anguish of today’s men, especially the poor and all those who suffer” (GS, 1) “.

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In what sense is your new diocese “treasure of the south”, as you defined it? What values ​​in particular does it emphasize?

“Beyond slogans and clichés, Naples is a beautiful city, even before the beauty of its history and nature for the heritage of humanity it holds. The wealth of the Neapolitans is complex and is made up of generosity, creativity, hospitality. Certainly there is no lack of shadows but the Neapolitans face them without giving up. Like all the people of the south, not only in Italy but also in the world. The so-called “art of getting by” of the Neapolitans is nothing more than resilience, the art of living on the night of the cross without forgetting the dawn of the resurrection, praying and fighting for it to arrive soon. And it is the resurrection that our south needs. For this reason, Naples, with its ability to resist and its desire to rise again, can be a treasure of redemption for the whole of the south “.

In the first message addressed to the Neapolitan faithful he spoke of “obvious problems, some old and some new”: which ones worry you the most?

«As I said, Naples has shadows, problems. We must tell ourselves without rhetorical hypocrites. Unemployment, the Camorra, the educational emergency, the marginalization of entire sections of the population cannot be ignored. The pandemic crisis has clearly brought out these difficulties. This is the hour of responsibility. We owe it to ourselves but above all we must be responsible for the new generations. Starting from them and with them is fundamental: for this reason it is necessary to put the educational challenge back at the center, creating a network, giving life to an educating community in which families and schools, Christian communities, institutions, the third sector, associations and volunteering can give life to a kind of global educational village. In this way, we are not working only on the future of children and young people but on the present of the city, on its safety which can only be guaranteed by a culture of life, made up of work, imbued with an ethic of care, capable of subtracting from the fascination with crime and easy money “.

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Do you have any fears for his person as archbishop of a diocese marked by problems of crime?

“I’m not afraid. I know in whom I have placed my hope. And I know that the beauty of the Gospel is capable of converting the hardest hearts and it is at the service of this conversion that I want to place my ministry. Without individual heroisms but generating an ecclesial journey, of community. Judge Falcone said that “the mafia – and this also applies to the Camorra – is not invincible. It is a human fact and like all human facts it has a beginning, and will also have an end ”. The Church, in the fragility of the men and women who make it up, can hasten this end to the extent that it remains faithful to the Gospel of justice and peace ”.

Don Luigi Ciotti wrote that Don Mimmo Battaglia is «a spiritual guide capable of immersing himself in the history of people, starting with the most fragile, poor, forgotten ones. A pastor also for many young people, whose needs, aspirations and anxieties he knows how to intercept. A point of reference »: what is the Neapolitan Church of Monsignor Mimmo Battaglia like and what will it be like?

“Don Mimmo’s Neapolitan church does not exist. The Church of Christ exists, he is the center of everything. And Christ dreams of a Church faithful to his Gospel, capable of flavoring every pastoral project with the salt of sharing, trusting not in structures and programs but in the mercy and tenderness of the Father. Jesus invites us to be a missionary Church, where not only rites are celebrated but sacred attention is given to the life and hopes of the women and men of our time. Starting with young people, so eager for those who know how to give authentic and reliable answers to their thirst for happiness. The Neapolitan Church is called to generate artisans of peace, believers who seek the infinite in their commitment to the earth, enthusiastic disciples capable of accepting limits to make them possiblè, giving everyone the seed of hope “.

You said: “We do not play our credibility as Christians on the basis of genuflections in front of the monstrance, but on the basis of the attention we will be able to give to the” body and blood “of unemployed young people”: this will be the main social challenge that will he want to face and support?

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«Unemployment is a terrible social scourge on which we, as Samaritans, are called to bend down, pouring the oil of proximity and the balm of an operational, concrete, tangible solidarity. We cannot turn away: it would mean betraying the Gospel. Institutions and citizens today more than ever can not stand by the window waiting for this sore to heal by itself. We must all be industrious together. And we too as Church will do our part, without ever letting our voice, our hands, our heart fail to show everyone that together we can make possible what alone is impossible “.

Before entering the cathedral of Cerreto Sannita, a visit to the Criminal Institute for minors of Airola. Before the cathedral of Naples, the recollection in prayer with the cloistered nuns of the church of San Giuseppe dei Ruffi, then the meeting with the family of Francesco Della Corte, the vigilante killed by three minors, and a visit to a Whirlpool worker: which messages wanted to launch?

“I wanted to make a symbolic pilgrimage of justice and peace starting precisely from praying with the cloisters because it is from the encounter with the spring love of God that the mission of the Church is born and it is always to it that her commitment to suffering man leads. I wanted to meet people and stories representative of the fragility and suffering of the city. In them, in every fragile and poor person, Christ himself is present, his wounded flesh. Too many times we relegate the poor and the suffering to anonymity with our indifference, but poverty is not a category: it is made up of names to be pronounced, of faces to caress, of sacred stories to welcome and meet. I wanted to experience this pilgrimage in intimacy, accompanied only by two presbyters and two young people so that it would represent not only the Bishop’s desire but the need of the whole Neapolitan Church to travel together a new stretch of exodus, a common path that commits us to walking together among the narrow streets of the suburbs, among the dark alleys of the struggles of the city, to sow the hope of the Kingdom with audacity ”.

In the Catholic enclosure there are no vax: what do you think?
«In my diocese I invite priests, deacons and pastoral workers to get vaccinated. Some have shown me their physical or moral impossibility to undergo the vaccination: taking this into account, I ask all those who intend to carry out their service in favor of the People of God to undergo the swab ».

A summarized version of this interview was published in today’s edition of the newspaper La Stampa

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