Immigrants from the Gioia Tauro plain in Calabria call him “Dad Africa”. Every day, for over twenty years, he has brought them blankets, clothes, food, medicines but above all that human warmth that the many “invisible” people who live in the shanty towns and tent cities of the area need. Bartolo Mercuri is the president of the association “Il Cenacolo”, which he founded in 2000 in Maropati, a town of one thousand four hundred souls at the foot of the Aspromonte. Since then he has never stopped bringing his help together with many volunteers, in particular with those who are part of the Renewal in the Holy Spirit.
Present in St. Peter’s Square for the general audience – reports the Osservatore Romano -, he wanted to meet Pope Francis, who today dedicated his catechesis to the drama of migrants. «It all started because God wanted it, and his call is stronger every day – he says – so much so that we currently have around 7000 people assisted, mostly from Africa and Ukraine».
“Il Cenacolo” has over time become a real social gathering center, with a soup kitchen and an extended “solidarity space”, given that among those assisted there are also laborers and families in difficulty. “Doing charity is a great act of love that follows a commandment of God: He says to love everyone without distinction of color and race, because we are all brothers and his children. If everyone did something for the other, suffering and loneliness could be alleviated”.
And so, thanks to his tenacity and with the solidarity of many who appreciate his work, in recent years Mercuri has collected what was necessary for the hospitalization and surgery, at the Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital in Rome, of a small 18-month-old Romanian boy, who survived a brain tumor, and of a young man who had a very serious heart disease that was successfully treated.