"Bella Ciao" resounds in the square outside Caserta Cathedral as the coffin of Monsignor Raffaele Nogaro leaves the cathedral, carried on the shoulders of migrants. It is the final farewell to the bishop emeritus, who died at 92, the man who chose to stand with the most vulnerable and walk beside them until the end. Not a folkloristic gesture, but a precise, political gesture in the highest sense of the word, capable of recounting a life spent without mediation alongside the poor, the vulnerable, and the invisible.
"Today our assembly is enveloped in a silence that is not absence, but listening. It is the silence that occurs when a prophet passes by." The words of the Cardinal of Naples, Don Mimmo Battaglia, punctuate a celebration that becomes a living memory. "It is the silence the earth assumes when a voice, which for years has cried out in the wilderness, returns to God, not to leave us, but to continue to dwell in our hearts, in our consciences with greater strength, amplified by the Spirit."
"Today the Church entrusts to the Father a man who has not only explained the Gospel: he has inhabited it. To the very core. Without diminishing it, without protecting it, without domesticating it." It is the portrait of a pastor who never sought refuge in convenience. "In this land he encountered wounded faces, broken stories, lives made fragile by violence and abandonment." The Camorra, illegality, exploitation, young people without a future, and nameless migrants were not distant backdrops, but living flesh. "He didn't pass by these faces. He stopped."
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"He didn't choose prudent silence, the kind that preserves tranquility and keeps up appearances. He chose the word of the Gospel." A clear, uncomfortable word. "It wasn't born of ideology, but of compassion; he didn't accuse because he was taking sides, but he denounced out of love." The fight against the Camorra also finds its roots here. "It wasn't born of a taste for conflict or a desire for confrontation. It was born of a profound conviction that the Gospel is incompatible with violence, with fear, with any form of domination over others."
"That's why he put his face on the line, when it came to defending Don Peppe Diana during his life and preserving his memory." These words convey the essence of an episcopate lived without compromise, right up to the final farewell entrusted to someone who, for Monsignor Nogaro, was never marginalized.
Source EDITORIAL TEAM
Comments (2)
I agree with Graziella's comment; her dedication to the vulnerable was a lesson for all of us. It's essential that her message live on in our daily actions.
Monsignor Nogaro is a very important figure for the community; he did so much for migrants and the poor. His life is an example we must never forget, even if, unfortunately, many will.