The justice of San Marcellino. What does the word Justice mean today? Opportunities and equality for everyone? Difficult to answer. The dignity of human beings is composed of many things, many others are not necessary. We need a place to sleep and we need food. We need affection, relationships, people to talk to, even to argue with, it’s more difficult to live alone.

We need a job or a task, a responsibility that allows us to make sense of our days. We need to be treated if we are sick. The list can go on. Can we imagine living with only one of these things? Can we live with only work or healthcare or warm meals? Women and men are more complex than such a simplification.

The association of San Marcellino was born in Genoa in 1945 when Father Paolo Lampedosa SJ, struck by the destruction of the historic center, asked the Opera del Don Orione to use the small church of San Marcellino in the heart of the old city. The welfare activities were the medical clinic, food and economic support and the distribution of clothing.

In the sixties, under the guidance of Father Carena SJ, San Marcellino began to present the problem of the weakest to the city. He sent an information sheet to thousands of people. Very striking were the insights into people’s difficulties and the absence of moral judgments in observing the living conditions of individuals. The difficulties of living the labor market were extremely timely understood.

The past few months I have been going to one of the communities of San Marcellino, a group of former homeless people. We eat together for dinner and I sleep there. On Sunday mornings, after mass, I take part in the distribution of medicines and medical visits to anyone present. They are indigent or homeless people, mostly Italians. Those who do not have a residence cannot access health services. It is a stable community of people who already do all domestic chores, some of them have a job. There are other communities that meet different needs, for example those who have just left the road and are gradually making a recovery and exit from alcohol, are not yet ready to have responsibilities. All these people are faces and names, some had a job in the bank, they had a family and a house.

I am sure that each of us has felt or feels something missing in our life. Maybe we don’t like our job or we get a poor pay or we are somehow disappointed with our relationships. If we take the time to meditate on our lives we can consider how lucky we were not to get stuck in an unsustainable situation and without a place to go. Many times talking to them and eating with them, playing chess with them (and defeated spectacularly every time) I wonder: why did it happen to them and not to me?

This is the question in which I hear the word Justice and I wish that this were a question asked by everyone and not just by some.