CENACOLO
On the weekend of May 23/24 two boys from the Cenacolo Community came and gave testimonies at each of the Parish Masses. Nicola (Italian) and Sascha (Austrian) told us about the Community and how it had saved their drug addicted lives and led them from darkness to light.
In 1983 a little Religious Sister in a northern Italian city got permission from her superiors to go and work with young people living on the streets. The Town Council gave her a ramshackle, dilapidated property and it was here that Sr Elvira began her life saving work with mainly drug/alcohol addicted young people. Now there are 60+ houses throughout the world, three are in South America where the young men and women from the Community have set up safe homes for the Street children.
Cenacolo (the room where Jesus ate his Last Supper) proposes not a 12 step programme, as is common in many rehabilitation places, but rather a ‘school of life.’ Here the boys and girls are asked to commit at lease 2 years to living in Community and discovering themselves. The three foundations are: work, prayer and friendship. The House at Dodding Green near Kendal was opened 4 years ago and can take 16 boys. To enter the Community a boy or a girl need to attend the meetings which are held in various parts of the country. If they seem genuine they will be invited to do some ’working days’ – 3 days when they live in the Community and experience what it is like. If they then want to enter, and the boys think that they will benefit, they either go to Dogging Green or (often) are sent to one of the Houses on the continent. The first few days and weeks can be such a shock to their addicted systems that their first instinct is to leave. But if they are abroad, this is less easy, and that, in part, is why the Communities are made up of many different nationalities. The boys live completely from providence. That means that they receive no money whatsoever (no state benefits). So what they are given is what they eat. There is a box in our porch for food gifts which Fr L will deliver.