Risking my life at the railway terminal in Rome

I was on my way into Rome one day for a doctor’s appointment, when a young man bumped into me as I was getting off the train at the station. He was a young foreigner, and three men ran after him. “Thief! Stop him!” The crowd stopped him and he fell to the ground. When the men caught up to him they began insulting and beating him and kicking him in the stomach.

As I watched this brutal scene, I gave a fleeting thought to my serious condition of hypertension. But right away I understood that then and there that boy’s life was more important than mine. I couldn’t give in to the usual way of thinking and pretend nothing was happening. The Gospel I was trying to live demanded much more from me.

So I rushed into the crowd, pushing my way through with my bag. I threw myself over the boy to protect him. He was shouting for help and when his aggressors saw what I had done, they decided to stop. “Don’t you all feel ashamed treating him like this?” I asked them. “What serious crime did he do to make you to treat him like this?” “He stole my wallet,” one of them answered.

The boy, who was 16 years old, told me he had to steal in order to buy bread. He hadn’t eaten for two days, and was sleeping under a bridge. In the meantime, the police arrived. The boy started to explain that he had fled from his country two years before. His whole family had been killed and he was the only one who had escaped death by hiding under a haystack. Then he came to Italy, a place, his friends told him, where life was much better.

The police brought the boy to the hospital and I went along with them. On the way, he held my hand tightly, and said, “Mama, you’ve saved my life. You are my Italian mother.” In the emergency room he was diagnosed with a fractured skull and three broken ribs. After a while a Sister came to tell us that he had to be admitted to the hospital, but that he didn’t have the necessary clothing. I went to buy the things he needed and soon after he was admitted.

As I was caring for him, the police officers and the Sister read me his clinical report and asked if I was a relative. I said no. From their eyes I saw that they were both perplexed and moved. “Why are you doing this?” they asked me. I answered that every day I try to love my neighbor, seeing Jesus in him or her, and I felt I couldn’t turn away from difficult situations. The eyes of the Sister welled up with tears and she told me that I had just given them a beautiful lesson in love, because only someone who puts the Gospel into practice is capable of doing something like this. She encouraged me to continue living this way.

Before leaving the hospital, and just as I was leaving some money – all that I had on me – for a visit to a specialist and to cover the boy’s needs, the Sister told me not to worry about him. “You’ve already saved his life, now I’ll take care of him.” Even the police officers thanked me for acting as I did, saying that I had risked a lot. Afterwards, justice ran its course, but I know that today this boy lives in a Catholic community and works as a caretaker there, thanks to the Sister I met at the hospital.

(M.T. – Italy, from the volume When God intervenes: Experiences from all over the World, Città Nuova Publishing, Rome 2004)