A letter from the San Vittore prison chaplain in Milan to the young people who delivered 1500 panettoni (an Italian traditional Christmas cake) to prison inmates with the desire to make them experience a more genuine Christmas spirit “They are young and they move like a wave. I feel as if I am riding on a surfboard: one may admire the beautiful performance however it’s the wave that pushes you forth. Whoever rides on this wave travels afar without any effort.” This is what Fr. Pietro, chaplain of the San Vittore prison in Milan, wrote about his experience with a group of Youth for a United World (Y4UW) on Christmas Eve. They brought warmth to the inmates during the night we celebrate the “silent miracle of light”.
The whole story began when these Y4UW started singing at the prison Sunday Mass: a moving experience that left its mark. A few months before Christmas, they took up the challenge to collect one panettone for each prison cell. “The cell is the only home an inmate possesses” – they said – “and therefore in every cell – as in every home, in a big city, as San Vittore prison – we want to bring the Christmas atmosphere.”
“It is they who come out with the ideas, with proposals and with the best intuitions,” continued writing the chaplain. “And whoever tells me that they are inconstant and continuously changing, I would say that these are typical liquid properties. However, remember that liquids have a magical property: they can’t be compressed. The pressure they exert is enormous: they can move mountains. They are young and their creativity puts you under constant pressure. Whoever listens to them is lucky and walks on water.”
“Today we brought the panettoni to San Vittore!” – shared one of the Y4UW. “We were a good team: some of us unloaded the vans, some filled the bags and others passed them through the prison metal detector… everyone was busy! Then four of us had the beautiful gift of bringing the panettoni to the cells. It is impossible to describe the emotion we felt in stepping over the threshold of each cell, and handing the panettone to each inmate. Their joy and gratitude was amazing. And so we experienced a different Christmas… a much more real one.”
“Adult’s generosity often sediments into a routine,” Fr. Pietro wrote and he knows very well what he is talking about as he has seen many Christmases at San Vittore. “Often times, donations such as panettoni to the inmates may risk turning into an institutional gesture. You always get the same person delivering the donation, with the same van that belongs to the same firm. And the mechanical gesture of distribution kills the momentum of the original initiative.”
“However, these young people come up to you and say: “Well, why don’t we?” First they set a challenge to themselves and then they get the whole world involved. They say: “We won’t even buy one panettone! We won’t seek a large donation. We will, instead, go about the streets, visit schools and friends, speak to our families and tell them of the dark world that lies behind the prison perimeter walls. We will talk about those persons about whom we don’t really care whether they are good or bad, guilty or innocent, but who certainly need a gesture of love.” These gestures are not aimed at filling a void within us but something much more sublime.
And the result was way beyond our expectations. These Y4UW aimed at distributing 450 panettoni, one for each cell. Soon they became 500, then 1000, and then 1400 and then they lost count. Today in prison, there were 1553 men and 96 women, without counting the personnel and operators. And it appears that everyone received a gift…”
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