Transcript of the homily delivered by Cardinal Domenica Battaglia, Archbishop of Naples, at the Church of Regina Coeli, on the occasion of the liturgical feast of Saint Giovanna Antida in 2026, the year marking the bicentenary of Mother Thouret’s assumption into heaven.
“I am truly delighted to be here and to share this moment with you, which is also a time of celebration for you.
As I mentioned when greeting the Mother General and the Council, I owe much of my journey and my formation to the Sisters of Charity; for the work we have carried out together, especially in Catanzaro, in the therapeutic communities and beyond.
The person who helped me in a special way at the beginning and wanted me to experience poverty and the plight of the least among us was none other than a nun, whom I consider extraordinary, who ran the internal hospital – among other things, the civil hospital in Catanzaro – and whose name was Sister Caterina F. I would like to offer a special prayer for her this evening.
Well, I am here on the eve of Pentecost. We have heard a word that is important for our lives. But on this eve we are remembering, giving thanks to the Lord, and also marking the bicentenary of Saint Giovanna Antida.
I shall try to bring these two things together in a very simple way, starting precisely from the Word we have heard, which is a Word that the Lord this evening addresses to each of us, as always, and it is a word that challenges us, a word that provokes us:
Whoever is thirsty, come; come and drink. Do you notice, Jesus does not say: let whoever is thirsty wait. Let those who are thirsty wait for this thirst to pass. No. Let those who are thirsty come, and I will give them the water of life.
And then he adds, a passage of the utmost importance for grasping the full beauty of Saint Giovanna Antida, but also the beauty of all those who call themselves Christians and have entrusted their lives to the Lord, in a particular way: water will flow from her womb, gushing forth for all.
It is a very powerful, very beautiful passage.
Living water will flow from the womb of those who believe, of those who take action, of those who entrust themselves to the Lord. Think how important this word is, which, I repeat, is a word addressed to each one of us. If you truly believe, if you truly trust in the Lord, if you have truly entrusted your story, your life, to him, living water will flow from your womb; it is the water of the Spirit, it is the water of life.
And tonight, even as we inaugurate this new church, we are, in essence, celebrating the beauty of life. For it is wonderful to gather in this church, which is something extraordinary, artistically truly beautiful. But take heed: in Saint Giovanna Antida, the Spirit truly worked, because she allowed the Spirit to work in her life. This is Pentecost: allowing the Spirit to truly work in your life.
Open your heart, welcome the beauty, the gentleness and the power of the Spirit that changes your life, that fills your life.
And where is the paradox? That Saint Giovanna Antida, by opening her heart to the Spirit and letting herself be guided by the Spirit, stepped out of the church, stepped out of the Upper Room.
To do what? To dwell on the streets, to dwell in the alleys, to encounter the face of the Christ she loved in the faces of so many brothers and sisters living with suffering and pain.
She walked the streets of Naples, in a very particular way, with her feet in the mud, but with her hands always in motion, ready to caress, ready to embrace, ready to offer comfort, always ready to offer hope.
So here, for all of us, sisters and brothers, there is an important message for grasping the transformative power of Pentecost. Because Pentecost is the opposite of indifference. Pentecost is the opposite of resignation.
Pentecost is allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit and having the courage to inhabit history, to inhabit life, to live life as blessed and beloved children, filled with the gentleness of the Spirit.
You are blessed and beloved children. All this is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the power of Pentecost, which truly changes your life and helps you to live in today’s world, despite the tragedies we are all experiencing, despite the contradictions of this world, despite this war; it invites you to live life as the Risen One. Believing in life and choosing always to stand on the side of life.
Therefore, to celebrate Pentecost is to be passionate about hope.
To celebrate Pentecost is to be artisans of peace.
To celebrate Pentecost is the courage, even at the cost of personal sacrifice, to go against the tide.
And is this not the Gospel?
Is this not what you chose on the day you allowed yourself to be met by the Lord’s gaze and said yes to him, because you chose to follow him, to make him unique in your life?
The courage to go against the tide is the courage of love.
And Pentecost is the gift of the Spirit who is love, who is only love, who is always love, and brings the Lord’s presence to life today in my story, in the story of each one of us.
And it brings this Church to life, because today is the manifestation of the Church that is loved by God, that is inhabited by God, despite our wounds, despite our inadequacies, despite our contradictions, just like the life of each one of us, yet it is loved by God; it is loved.
And the Church is called to live out this mission and to be a perpetual Pentecost, just like the life of each one of us. And it is beautiful that it is so, brothers and sisters.
Because tonight, even as we celebrate Saint Giovanna Antida, in some way all of us, all of us who have encountered and known her in our lives, even if only through someone’s words or her writings, understand well that all of us, everyone, starting with me, tonight must have the courage to do one very simple thing. Thinking of her life, guided by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, and thinking also of your congregation, Dear Mother, Saint Giovanna asks you just one thing; she asks me, she asks all of us just one thing: return to the source, start afresh from the source, return to the roots, and you will rediscover the strength of your being within the Church and in this world, within this history.
Because this world needs your charism. Never forget that.
And you, by cherishing it, living it, returning to the roots, to that source, will truly be Pentecost today for all those who meet you on your journey. This is the meaning, brothers and sisters, of this celebration this evening.
We truly need to give thanks to the Lord, to look to Saint Giovanna Antida and in her discover the meaning of our vocation, the reason, for which one day in our lives we made that very choice and not another. And the courage to renew it, that choice. For God continually renews his love and the Spirit comes to renew the face of the earth.
Even this evening the Spirit renews my face, our face, renews our heart so that our face may truly be the reflection of that heart filled with God’s tenderness, and so that we may all learn, in life, every day, God’s gaze, because this world needs this gaze, God’s gaze.
Let me tell you a story from the time I lived in a therapeutic community, to help you understand even better what I am trying to convey, communicate and share with you this evening.
I have always had important guiding principles. Words that have guided me on my journey. One of the key principles on which I based so many of my choices was:
Charitable works are not enough if the charity behind the works is lacking.
Charitable works are not enough if the charity behind the works is lacking. That charity which consists – and Saint Giovanna Antida is a master of this – in standing before the Lord. In standing before the Lord, in kneeling before the Lord. Because that kneeling before the Lord is what gives you the courage and strength to get back on your feet, always standing to go and serve, to go and meet others, to go and bring hope to the world, His peace, His word, His presence—yes, the presence of the Lord.
But everything stems from that charity which lies in standing before the Lord.
We can conquer the whole world, the whole world, the world on its knees before us.
But if it does not all begin with that standing before the Lord, we are merely seeking ourselves and not the Lord’s will.
Works of charity are not enough if the charity behind the works is lacking.
And to this is added another thing, another important word that follows on from this, and which for me has truly been a fundamental choice, even on my own journey, even in those times when I did not always manage to put all this into practice; yet it was important because it always served as my ability to question myself.
This is an important thing, my sisters and brothers. This ability to always question ourselves every day. Because there is a risk of seeking ourselves rather than the Lord’s will. In God’s plan for our lives, this risk is ever-present. So only by questioning ourselves every day, starting afresh every day, asking the Lord: Lord, what do you want me to do for you?
It is a completely different matter from what I want to do for myself. It is a completely different matter.
I invite you to reflect on this truly with great humility.
So what is the message? It is this, and I entrust it to you.
When you give alms,
always do so in such a way that the poor may forgive you.
One day I was in the community when a young woman arrived. A young woman who was HIV-positive, and we welcomed her. She arrived with a little girl; the little girl was also HIV-positive.
This young woman’s partner had already died of AIDS.
We welcomed her.
After a few days, this girl realised that I was a priest; she hadn’t noticed straight away. At one point she came up to me and said: if you want to talk to me, never do so as a priest, because I don’t believe in the priests’ God and I don’t believe in priests. If you want to talk to me, speak to me just like everyone else, but don’t speak to me as a priest because I won’t trust what you say.
And I respected her wish. And even when we held spiritual meetings in the community, moments of sharing, she didn’t want to be there; I accepted her absence too, because she didn’t want anything to do with priests.
Then I understood why. I understood it at a particular moment in her life, when she told me everything – everything she had been through, particularly with a priest.
Because in a moment of need this girl had gone to ask a priest for help; because she would do anything in life to survive – without going into details – this priest, at a certain point, looking at her, said: ‘No, I won’t help you because you don’t deserve anything.’
Let us ask the Lord for forgiveness for all this. Let us ask for forgiveness.
So I always tried to respect the moments that belonged to this girl. At a certain point, the girl began to feel unwell. By then she had AIDS. We took her to hospital. I went to the hospital every day to visit her, but not because I had to do my job, but because when you meet someone and start sharing with them, and you feel that this person is somehow part of your life, you cannot help but bear this in mind, regardless of who you are.
And I went just to be by her side, nothing else, without saying a word, simply to be by her side. One day the head of the ward called me and said: ‘Listen, Don Mimmo, you can see there’s nothing more we can do for this girl. She’s at the end now. I advise you to take her home so she can spend the last moments of her life, her final days, in an environment other than the hospital, but also to give her, in these last days, a different kind of peace.’
And I was in a crisis. A crisis because we, as a community, weren’t yet ready, prepared to take in a terminally ill person. Because two months earlier a young man had died, also from AIDS, and it had been a disaster for the community. We were ready in our hearts, but we were absolutely not ready in terms of the tools and equipment needed to care for a terminally ill person.
So what do I do?
I try to find out if there are any communities or care homes for people with terminal AIDS. And I find one in Reggio Calabria. I was in Caranzano. I ring them and they tell me they can take this girl in. So I get in the car, put this girl in the car with me, along with two young people from the community, and we drive to Reggio Calabria, over 200 kilometres away.
And she was taken in by this care home in Tende, which was run simply by two nuns. Two nuns and a group of volunteers.
And three or four times a week, I’d get in the car and drive there, to be with this girl, whose name was Rita.
Whether it was for the new AIDS cocktail, or above all because of the attention, care and compassion of these nuns – bear in mind that she was completely paralysed, she needed everything, from being fed to personal hygiene, she needed everything – whether it was the new cocktail or the care of these nuns, at some point one day I went and found her waiting for me at the door in her wheelchair.
And for me it was truly a miracle, truly a miracle. And do you know what we did? We started playing cards, playing briscola. That’s what we did.
Christmas time came round. The nun, Sister Rosanna, called me and said: ‘Listen, Mimmo, there’s a risk that by Christmas there’ll be no one left here and Rita will be left all alone. Why don’t you speak to the community? If anything, Rita could come and stay with you for the whole Christmas period, so she can see her little girl again and spend some time with her, given that she’s feeling better now.’
Because positivity had turned into negativity – an absurd thing. I told her: ‘Look, there’s no need for me to speak to the community about it; I’ll come and collect Rita straight away on Christmas Eve.’
And so I went to collect Rita on Christmas Eve. Rita came to the community and stayed until 6 January. Christmas Eve, Christmas dinner – a fantastic time in the community.
I wish for you – the sisters know this – but I wish for everyone to be able to experience Christmas one day alongside the poor. Christmas alongside the poor.
There you realise that the poor do not just give you their problems; they give you their wealth, they give you their friendship, they give you their hope, which is always something liberating.
And I will never forget that dinner in my life; it was wonderful.
The children were over the moon with her.
After dinner, around midnight, I went to get ready to celebrate Christmas Eve Mass, the community’s midnight service.
At one point, I saw Rita arrive in her wheelchair, accompanied by another girl from the community.
Rita arrives and says to me: Father, I need to speak to you. And I say: Rita, if you’re joking, you’ve picked the wrong time. Leave me in peace now — jokingly — because I have to prepare for Mass; we can sit down later, we’ll see each other after Mass. And besides, I don’t understand why you’re calling me ‘Father’ — are you telling me you’ve met God? And Rita replies: Yes, I’ve met God. I met Him in the eyes, the smile and the hands of Sister Rosanna. And in you coming to look for me without asking me anything. Tonight I want to make peace with God and I want you to hear my confession because that’s how I want to experience my Christmas.
I met God in the eyes, the smile and the hands of Sister Rosanna.
And then she said to me: ‘I want to go to confession.’ It was the most beautiful gift God gave that evening to me, to my life and also to Rita’s life. Because then, for Rita, sadly, on 2 April, acute pancreatitis set in and she didn’t make it, but she passed away reconciled with her story and with her life.
That too was Pentecost for me.
Do you understand, sisters and brothers? Do you understand, holy sisters, just how truly important our history is, our life? And how Saint Giovanna Antida truly calls us back to the meaning of our vocation—allow me to say, the meaning of your motherhood, your sisterhood, the meaning of who you are.
And how God’s work passes through your gaze, your eyes, your service, your hands: what happened with Saint Giovanna Antida, and which the Lord wishes to repeat in the lives of a million of us. Not because He must somehow duplicate things, no, but for the beauty of your uniqueness, of our closeness.
You are unique, always, you are unique.
And let the Spirit truly work in your lives, so that it may be even more your own, so that it may always be Pentecost.
And so let us thank the Lord for this and let us all truly allow ourselves to be guided by the beauty of the Spirit.
And remember: When you practise charity, wherever you are, always do so in such a way that the poor may forgive you.
Have a good journey!
[Not reviewed by the author]
