Cub reporters grow

Headline: “Pollution”. Subheading: “We have to stop!”. Summary: “The world is starting to become a landfill”. The young journalists of Estate Ragazzi in Vaticano (Kids’ Summer Camp at the Vatican) 2024 do not lack the gift of synthesizing. Andrea Monda, Director of L’Osservatore Romano, invited them to work on the “real” templates of the Pope’s newspaper, and they took their role as columnists very seriously.

This year’s theme, “Cavalieri erranti” Errant knights), invites kids to be curious and daring as they explore and describe the world.

“A theme for a summer rich with sporting challenges and new adventures”, reads the website for the camp geared towards children of Vatican Governorate and Holy See employees. The camp is made up of educational paths which include group dances, team games, sporting activities, workshops and shows. A meeting with Pope Francis also took place (as happened last year).

“Cavalieri Erranti” is not only the title of this summer adventure, but it synthesizes the challenge that we want to propose to ‘Estate Ragazzi’: setting out on a journey, without a pre-set destination, other than to overcome the challenges of daily life and accomplish one’s own dreams and big goals”.

Through Don Quixote’s story, the organizers explain, “each day will be a heroic endeavour revolving around themes like kindness, generosity, respect and courage”.

Before the workshop, “Reporters for a day”, set up Thursday, 11 July, in a room adjacent to the Paul vi Hall, the kids were divided into groups. Each table was assigned a different page: from the international to the cultural section, without forgetting the Vatican section and the front page (which was tasked with compiling the other groups’ contributions), a special on the Laudato Si’ environmental theme, and finally, an Osservatore di strada (“Street Observer”) for children.

“Each time I pass by Torre Maura”, reads one of the articles, “I would see her often and she would always make my heart melt. Roberta is a woman who, like many, did not have the opportunities to live a better life. In a short amount of time, speaking with her, I found out that she has a big heart”. Even more dramatic is “Storia di un cambiamento inaspettato” (“Story of an unexpected change”), written by hand, in neat all-caps, next to the article about the homeless woman adopted by the Torre Maura neighborhood.

“He was a pre-school teacher who loved his job. I ran into him years later, but he was unrecognizable at first; he was living on the street. He told me he had been unjustly accused by a co-worker. He lost all his assets, his family’s respect, and, above all, his self-respect”.

Among the requests for open-topic editorials was a lot of market soccer and plenty of commentary on England’s victory over the Netherlands, in the days before the final with Spain, and a wide range of topics always pertaining to the European Championships and the defeat of the Italian national team, but also a detailed, surprising question of clarification on the delicate international political scenarios unfolding among Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran, coming from a budding reporter who in the time available for the workshop managed to compile a two-page special, complete with hand-drawn maps and prototype infographics on the world’s ongoing conflicts.

There were many reports on war. The drawings the kids added to the template provided by L’Osservatore showed bombs raining down on buildings that had been reduced to skeletons with no doors or windows, and with shooting victims depicted as lifeless forms in the margins (the captions read “Ukraine” or “Gazza”, with uncertain spelling that never uses just one “z”) but also many images of blinding, reassuring suns.

There were many questions about the scandal of their peers being forced to take up arms and fight, as well as about the stupidity of the evil they often see on social media.

The video most often cited with horror in the articles is a clip of a person throwing a sick kitten over a cliff.

“Are cellphones good for kids?”, asks one of the children, with a headline that could easily be confused with the pages of the “grown-ups’” newspaper.

Before eating, at lunchtime, the young reporters sing the “Cumbia della fame”, a creative variation of the Sanremo hit by Angelina Mango, rearranged by the instructors. The line “Tutti pronti per un cuore gold?” (freely borrowed from the song by Mahmood) guides the children’s chorus. So young, but already so grown-up.

Silvia Guidi