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Mother Elvira, you just celebrated your seventieth birthday.
How do you feel?
I feel more alive than ever. I say more alive, not younger, because I look in the mirror and I see myself. I have more wrinkles, and my back is bent…but life never bends! My heart is always young. My courage gets stronger and makes me capable of taking risks of faith, that faith that is love, that gives meaning and  flavour to our existence. I feel that inside of me there is a powerful energy, the strength to give life, that pushes me to think of others first, instead of my fears, my needs, my hunger, thirst, and need of rest.
Looking back on 70 years of life, 50 of which have been in the consecrated life, what would you say to us?
Looking back on my life today, in the light of my encounter with God, I realize that He has always been in action in my life, and that the Holy Spirit guided my parents and my life circumstances to teach me the way to live charity, love, service, and the apostolate that I would have to develop. God prepares with precision those He calls to a specific work. Today I give thanks that I was born into a numerous and poor family, immigrated from the South during the war of 1940-45. I give thanks that I obeyed my parents who asked of me and my siblings a life of many sacrifices. I experienced my father’s alcoholism, my mother’s need to work long days because she was a nurse and all of the weight of the family fell onto her. From the time I was a small child, I always had to think of the others, and this was my greatest richness and the foundation of my formation.
Do you have any particular memories of your father or your mother?
It was after the war, and there was a lot of poverty. Until I was 15 years old, I never had shoes. I remember that my father got drunk periodically and this caused me to feel judged and to be ashamed. When he came to pick me up from school on his bicycle and he was staggering, all the children would say, “Look, Rita, your father is drunk again.” So many humiliations and struggles that, at first glance, could seem like a useless suffering. But now I understand that the Holy Spirit guided my life through the fragility of my father, who in spite of everything, was my teacher of life because he kept me on the right path. He did not allow me to play in the town because I had many siblings to take care of. I got in trouble if he saw me sitting on the grass with my friends. At times he woke me at night and I had to get up and go buy him cigarettes. Today I realize that all of this took away many of my fears and taught me the meaning of sacrifice. It made me understand the meaning of humiliation, and I feel like a truly free woman, aware that inside of us there is a constant source of the love of God that permits us to always to rise again. Today I have experienced that in encountering God, your past is also illuminated and becomes a source of wealth.
How was the idea born to start the Community?
I realized that youths were social outcasts, abandoned by this consumeristic society. I realized that in families there was no longer dialogue or communication, nor trust among the married couples, or between parents and their children. The youth were left to fen for themselves, and when I saw them on the street, they looked sad. In my prayer I felt that I could hear their cry of pain. The youth went in one direction and the rest of the world in another, and this made me suffer. I felt pushed by something that did not come from me, that I couldn’t ignore, that grew more and more. It wasn’t an idea. Even I did not know what was happening, but I felt I needed to give the youth something that God had put in me for them. This is how the call came to open the doors to the lost, the addicts, and those who desperate youth that we see at the train stations and on the streets.
Many years passed before being able to begin. For you, who are a woman of action, was it difficult for you to wait?
The call that comes from God makes you capable of doing works and believing in things that you would have never have thought or imagined. It was not easy for me to explain to my superiors what I felt and, likewise, I realize very well, that it was not easy for them to believe that what I expressed really came from God. I asked several times and for many years to be able to open a house that welcomed young people, and rightly so, in response they brought to attention my limits and my poverties: I had not studied, I was not prepared…but within me a volcano had erupted, and I felt compelled to give an answer to that God who was enriching me with a gift that was not mine to give back to the youth. It was a painful time of waiting, but the tenacity and perseverance given to me by God were the seal of his Fatherhood over that which was being born.
When you arrived at the gate of Saluzzo for the first time, what were you thinking?
I remember that day very well. It was July 16, 1983, the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel, and I received the keys to begin. Seeing the condition of the house, those who had accompanied me wrung their hands in disbelief. It was dilapidated, without  doors, without windows, the roof needed to be repaired, there were no beds, tables, chairs, pots or pans, I didn’t have a penny…nothing! I looked at the lost expression on their faces, but I already saw everything that had to happen. I already saw it almost as it is today: reconstructed, beautiful, and full of young men and women! It’s amazing how the Holy Spirit sustained, consoled, and comforted me! I thought of a big house for at least 50 drug addicts, and after a short time, the rooms were already full, to my immense amazement, and with the interior struggle to decide what to do. Inside, I said to myself, “Basically,, I’m already a good nun with 50 drug addicts. But life forward, and the youth continued to knock at the door, and so we opened another house, and then another, and then one more. Then it wasn’t me who thought about us anymore; it was Our Lady who took care of us, with houses abroad, here and there.
Why did you choose the name “Comunità Cenacolo?”
I wanted at all costs that Mary be included. So we asked ourselves, where do you find Mary in the Bible? One place was the Cenacle with the apostles, locked in and full of fear after the death of Jesus, like the addicts of today, timid, afraid, and mute. But the Holy Spirit comes with Mary, and they are transformed into courageous witnesses. So we chose the name Comunita Cenacolo (Community of the Cenacle). We love to define ourselves also as a Community of public sinners, sinners who also want to reveal to the whole world the infinite and great mercy of God. This is our message. We want to be that living hope of a mercy that is always present, always active, always new, hovering over me, over them, over everyone.
Regarding the opening of the Community, were there controversies?
For sure, at the beginning not everyone was happy! They called me everything in the book! Some people would not even greet me anymore. With contempt they said, “Drug addicts! What’s this nun doing with drug addicts? She eats and lives with them.” It’s true. I don’t have any academic preparation. I don’t know other languages. I’m a poor “traveling goose,” and I’m aware of it. But the most beautiful thing in the world is to accept ourselves for who we are. God walks with us and does the rest. Here I learned what the word “charisma” means, a word that I didn’t know. It’s something that others can’t understand and even you don’t understand, but you see that the things you do move toward a new direction, even for yourself. Walking with your hand in His, going forward, you realize that God confirms and guides you through life in concrete ways. It is not something that is calculated or programmed, but something that’s new for you, too.
How were you able to start from nothing, without a penny?
In the beginning we lived in poverty because we had nothing, only the security to have trust in God. I remember that a man brought us a lawnmower and the necessities to fix up the house. This was one of the many signs of Providence that opened my eyes to the works that God was beginning. Many times I could not permit myself to care about the judgments of the others. One time we were without gas. I went to town with the Fiat 500 to a warehouse; “Excuse me I need a tank of gas, but I don’t have any money.” The lady said to me: “How is it possible, a nun cannot do this! What do you want, the whole market has stopped working, the consumers are not buying anything, and we are in bad times, sister, bad times.” And I said “That’s okay, don’t worry ma’am, they told me to come to you…but its not important,” and I started the car to go to another place that sold gas. Meanwhile someone said: “Sister, sister, wait, wait a moment! Francesco, give her a small tank of gas.” When she put it in the car I thanked her and said “Ma’am, we will pray for you.” We used that tank for fifteen days and then once again we were without gas. I said to myself I would go back down to the same place because I had nothing to lose. I went back, and immediately as she saw me she got up, came towards me and said to me, “Sister, what has changed? The doors of the market were opened. My brother was there and everything was resolved. Sister, you will no longer be without gas.” They gave me two huge tanks of gas that did not even fit in the car. After a while they arrived to our house and installed a permanent gas tank, and now after many years a truck still passes by to refill the tank, and leaves. When you go in the name of the Lord, you have a strength that is not yours. And you don’t care anymore about the others’ judgment. If they smile at you or make you cry, it doesn’t matter. They could have beaten me up, I would have taken it, and restarted.
What else do you remember about the beginning?
The day in which I understood we had to take away cigarettes! A few years had past and in a certain moment, this thought was bouncing around in my head, “I am not faithful to the young men. They want to free themselves from drugs, and I let them have tobacco in their pockets.” And here again there was this “movement” inside of me that I wasn’t able to resist. One evening while we were in the chapel, I kneeled in front of them and said “Guys, I ask for your forgiveness, because you have come here to be freed from drugs, and I was afraid that you would go away if I took away your cigarettes. But from this evening on in Community, there is no more smoking!” Then I called on “the worst,” the young man who wanted cigarettes at any cost, the one that created all kinds of havoc. I said to him, “Go and get a plastic bag.” All of the guys were sitting down, and he walked in front of them with the bag, and each one threw away the cigarettes that were in their pockets. Then I said, “Guys, if any of you want to leave, you have a reason, so knock on the office door, and we will give you the money to get home. When you have accepted that here you cannot smoke any more, you can re-enter without going to the meetings.” We made a huge fire, and no one moved an inch, no one left. Everyone accepted it immediately. You see! My fears! I suffered in that moment because I knew that they liked “that cigarette.” From this I understood that it is not true that young people are lazy, fearful, and indifferent. It's not true! They are capable of struggling, capable of suffering, and of making sacrifices. The youth are the most beautiful group in the world, and I am really at home with them. Today I can speak from experience, because I “dirtied” my hands, my face, my life, my reputation with their problems, and now I can speak about youth very candidly. They know that I am not interested in the drugs, but in their life! Today I’m able to speak because they were my teachers, and I am always listening. Hand in hand, as time passes, I want to continue to learn from them.
How were you able to convince the young men that lived on the street to pray?
The first young men that arrived got up in the morning and went to work in the fields. After a month one morning, one of them sat down by us while we were praying and said, “I want to do what you are doing.” This is how it started. After him the others slowly joined us in prayer. It never occurred to us, but when they began praying with us by their own spontaneous will, my soul jumped for joy. I was immensely grateful to God to have been given the intense joy of seeing young men who, until a short time ago were slaves of evil, now praying with us. Here I  understood that the young men were asking to find God, that they were hungry and thirsty for Him. That’s how the proposal of prayer and faith became the most fundamental part of our journey of rebirth.
What does faith mean to you?
For me, faith is the living encounter with a person, Jesus Christ. He is the solution to all problems. We need to have the courage and to show this to the young people. I offered them what saved me: the Cross and the life of Christ, who is alive today. To open the doors to Christ means to open the doors to your brother, your sister, to risk, to love, to open the door to that faith that at times is so bright, so intense that you can’t see or understand anything.
How can the Community actually survive, living on Providence?
I came to understand that we should not rely on any human security at all, such as money offered to us by the state for helping addicts, nor by charging fees, although the parents were willing to give anything we asked of them to save their children from drug addiction. I realized that I had to propose the love of God and completely trust in Him. Because of this, it was necessary to exclude from our lives that which gives a false sense of security to all humans: money. When you have money, you feel stronger, more powerful, and at times arrogant, like the young men felt when they had money in their pockets. For them, money is a call again to death. You can’t speak in a theoretical way to drug addicts. Above all, at the beginning of their journey, they cannot understand the love of God. They only see your love. This was a great choice of freedom that the Community made. The fundamental motive was to show the young men who God truly is, that He is a Father who cares for His children, and that Providence watches over us day and night. In all these years I can joyfully testify that God’s Providence never has missed an appointment!
And your projects for the immediate future?
I have never planned, calculated, or decided what to do. I have always been in a listening posture to Life, reading the will of God for us. I would have never thought to open so many Community houses in different countries, to have seen the birth of the missions, or to send as the first missionaries the youth who are “reborn” into a new life. I have seen families, consecrated brothers and sisters, and young volunteers united with me in giving freely of their lives. I am the first to live the amazement of what the Lord is doing, and I desire only one thing: to continue to trust in Him, without any expectation to know His will, even an instant before it is comes into being. We want to follow Him wherever His hand leads us with the security that Mary is with us and God provides!
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