It seems like yesterday when Father Benjamin went to Bassano to the law office to sign the ASCS documents, and instead it has already been 20 years! 20 years of experiences, of meetings, of projects, of faces, of hope.

Here I think the most beautiful word that comes to mind right now is hope. I started this adventure with Father Benjamin 20 years ago, I was a volunteer and later became a worker, one of the first!

Working with ASCS was not just a simple job; it was a life experience for me. I went from Tijuana to Ciudad Juarez, and Aguaprieta — the Mexican years, on the border.

Then came the big chapter of Africa inCape Town, where I got to experience what it means to manage a diverse group, to create projects, to train people, to provide stability.

Then I returned to Italy where as director I joined Father Beniamino.

A Milan next to Father Beniamino I lived wonderful years, a magical time of ASCS, so many volunteers, so many operators, and going around the world was not only for me to take the plane but it meant to go and build projects together with the operators, especially local people.

Touring the world has been for me an experience of richness, joy, depth and hope. I return to this word because every person I met, every project made every victory, but also the failures, the problems, the moments of limitation or questioning, were all moments of hope.

Hope to build something different, hope to give voice to those who had no voice. Hope in being able to be that little pinch of salt that could give meaning to the lives of so many migrants and refugees and live with them their hope, their yearning for a better future, their desire to get back into the game.

I can say that ASCS has been an arm… Beniamino said we were the operating arm of the Scalabrinian congregation, and he was right. This arm was able to build, to take by the hand, to stand beside, to walk with the step and with the local people.

My experiences in Mexico, Africa, and then as director made me realize how important listening is, how important dialogue is, how important welcoming is, and how important it is to respect the time of each person you meet.

This was one of the many lessons, but perhaps the most beautiful, that Benjamin as the founder of ASCS, left me: that of put myself in listening, listening to the words spoken and the unspoken, listening to the cries expressed and the cries that sometimes remain in the hearts of refugees and migrants.

Traveling with Benjamin was a wonderful experience, traveling in the symbolic metaphorical sense but also in the concrete sense. The many trips taken with him, hours waiting in airports, sleeping in airports to avoid spending to find a hotel, missed flights, stolen computers… were moments for me of listening, of observation, where Benjamin was not only a teacher but was a sense of life.

Now what I am, what I do here in the diocese of Montreal I owe mostly to him, and his presence is now more alive than ever because having listened to him, watched him, imitated him, and having impregnated myself with his words, with his knowledge, allows me now to live my service and my work with a different attitude, each day new.

Benjamin continues to live in me as I believe and am sure in the ASCS.

ASCS has allowed me to grow, taught me to put myself alongside others, memories sometimes we can forget them, people sometimes we forget, but the experience lived with concrete people, and I just want to mention some of them who made the journey with me: Mirko Lucia, Emanuele, Giulia, Romina, Matteo, Deborah… they I do not forget. People who have enriched me, and who have made me grow, and who have continued to nurture, even though we are far away now, this hope in wanting and believing in a different world, in a just world where even the migrant is a refugee can be welcomed and can become responsible for his life.

The ASCS taught me that from the migrant and refugee we learn, we receive a lot, especially we who live in the receiving countries, see the migrant and refugee as an important, active and responsible person with his dignity.
Here the sense of dignity was another important element that the experience in the ASCS taught me to look at, and especially Benjamin: the dignity of every person, no matter their origin, their migration path, their wounds.

I conclude by thinking of Father Benjamin as the one who continues to live through us, through ASCS, through the people ASCS continues to approach, to serve, to raise awareness…

One simple word THANK YOU!

Alessandra Santopadre

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