Enzo’s discovery as a friend
The testimony of the friends who accompanied more than a thousand people on their visit to the exhibition on Enzo in the last edition of the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples
I am Marco – M to some friends – and together with other students from CLU (Communion and Liberation University) in Bologna during the week of the Meeting we explained Enzo Piccinini’s exhibition. The exhibition – as you know – was not created for the Meeting, but for the Campus by night, an event that with the Bologna CLU community we do in May on Zamboni Street where we bring exhibits and meetings that strike a chord with us and that we want our friends and fellow students to know about.
For us, the days of the Meeting were very busy, but in the face of what was happening we arrived at the end of the week grateful and moved. For example, a friend-the legendary Pia-told me, “These days were very intense and beautiful, however, even in the fatigue there were episodes that helped me overcome exhaustion. So many people met Dr. Piccinini for the first time through the Meeting exhibition, and they wanted to know more about him. Or some would come to the exhibit desk to tell me that they had been Enzo’s patients, or had received some clinical support, and the fact that they were still grateful gave me hope because it is the fruit of a story that continues, for Grace. It is a story that transcends the barriers of death.”
But the greatest discovery we carry with us is precisely that we realized that Enzo was and is our friend precisely because we felt helped by him. I remember a time during the last days of explaining when I started to lose my voice because of the intense shifts there were to be done, and so to explain the exhibition I always asked a friend for help; but when I took the microphone and started to speak, the exhibition gave me the voice I did not have or the energy I did not possess. It was a constant awakening, a tension that-at least to me-defied everything.
It was beautiful a lunch we had with some people on the first day, where a friend – Lollo – said, “Here I open my eyes again, and I need to see if the things we say are true, and especially if they are true then when I go home.” At that time we demanded that desire for happiness on everything we did–on studying, on relationships at home–and in those days it was clear that a possible hypothesis was there.
Our friendship with Enzo – friendship in the sense of tension over everything, not pats on the back – was evident, and for me it is evident just these days in Bologna, a month after the Meeting. I remember I was taking a shower and listening to Enzo’s video (best background ever), and as I was listening to it for the hundredth time at one point I think, “I, however, listen to Enzo every time because right now I need a friend. Every time I watch the video there is always a moment when I feel called back”; and that was the moment when the Giuss said to him, “Enzo but the problem is not praying … it’s that you don’t know how to offer. Offering means recognizing that reality is not something you have in your hand.” Beautiful to hear it again, because otherwise I would always end up forgetting it. With Enzo it is clear to me that I no longer want to be a spectator in my own life, but a protagonist.
Marco Ercolani, September 2023
