The “madness” of faith leading to forgiveness

Gemma Calabresi Milite, La crepa e la luce [The Crack and The Light], Mondadori

I still have clippings from the Avvenire newspaper dating back to 1988 that recounted Leonardo Marino’s repentance, who confessed to having been the driver of the terrorist commando that killed Commissioner Luigi Calabresi in 1972. As soon as I caught a glimpse of the book by Gemma Capra, wife of Commissioner Calabresi, online, I immediately bought it, to find out how that young 26-year-old girl, mother of two and pregnant with her third, had survived. I did not expect her journey of faith, her being aware from the first moment that God was close to her and would not abandon her, and that she would make it. I read the book in one sitting and with my eyes on the verge of tears throughout, with the awareness that ideology taken to the extreme actually reduces the human person to nothing, degraded to a symbol, in this case to be eliminated. “Let us say a Hail Mary for the murderer’s family”, Gemma says to her parish priest as soon as she is informed of her husband’s death. Madness or faith? It is not important to know, it is exciting and a significant testimony, however, to realise that from there a path of light began, not shared by the children, but which went straight to forgiveness.