THE PEDAGOGY OF SHARING A HOLISTIC

EDUCATIONAL APPROACH
When a community means a family
By Giovanni Paolo Ramonda (President of Associazione Comunit Papa Giovanni XXIII)
The proposition I wish to put forward and argue in favour of, does not refer to those children
we may call normally-abled, those who are healthy and appealing and for whom, luckily,
it is relatively easy to find a family ready to adopt or foster them. The people I am talking
about are both children and adults who, because of various issues that render them more
needy and less resilient, are at risk of having to stay in or return to institutions or
communities that do not function as families.
Children with serious physical disorders, with brain damage, with Downs syndrome, those
who are autistic, psychotic, with serious personality disorders. Adults with mental disorders
destined for enclosed psychiatric facilities, elderly people who are not self-sufficient sent to
residential care homes.
The aim is to support the right of the family and of the local authorities to choose those
communities that have proven themselves in the field as capable of providing a satisfactory,
competent and practical response, a response that is, above all, that of a family meeting the
needs of its members.
This argument poses a number of questions to those who administrate the public good. For
example: why do they insist on supporting communities not modelled on the family, treating
them as the norm because Law 149 provides for no other model? Why are certain regions
setting up residential care homes for children with serious disabilities, investing vast
economic resources in these structures? Why, when there are communities functioning as
real families, are these only accepted if they meet a single criterion of professional
qualification?
Why is there no acceptance, according to the principle of subsidiarity, of those
establishments that benefit society because they are capable of providing health and social
assistance within the context of family life?
What is the difference between a family and a family-home?
First
and
foremost
however,
what
is
really
family-home?
Undoubtedly, a family-home is a welcoming place where the utmost care is provided, where
the weakest members are equally as important as the others. The family experience enables
mutual regeneration through love. It is an environment that provides a mother, father, sister
and brother for people who no longer have a natural family or who can no longer remain
with their natural parents.
Care theories
Some places are totally inadequate for the growth of children or people in a state of need:
families in which children are maltreated and suffer violence because their parents are so
psychologically wounded that are unable to allow their children to grow, but also places in
which the state has invested vast sums but which are often incapable of meeting peoples
real needs. These are not only the old-style institutions but also those new incarnations that
while they may be labelled with new terminology, still bear no resemblance to a real family;

residential educational communities, group apartments for teenagers, for people with
disabilities, for the elderly, therapeutic communities for children, psycho-social rehabilitation
communities for children, integrated educational communities, the list goes on.
A study by Ren Spitz of 90 institutionalised children deprived of the necessary maternal
care and, above all, of the mother-child relationship that is key for healthy psychological and
physical development, highlighted the serious deprivation such children suffered, some
losing the will to live or shutting themselves into an autistic dimension. Spitz and Bowlby
demonstrated how emotional and affective experiences in early infancy are the foundation
and preparation for constructing the mature, balanced self. In contrast, deprivation and
neglect during early infancy lead to profound traumas to the person, leaving indelible traces
of
suffering
that
last
for
the
entire
lifetime.
Another study by Silvia Bonino of the Department of Psychology of the University of Turin,
showed how children placed in residential communities with a high staff turnover scored
notably lower in the cognitive, effective and emotional areas than children of the same age
(from 0 to14 months) growing up in a normal family environment.
Winnicott1 spoke of the deprived child, stating that: there are some brilliant individuals
who organise a community really well but then leave it and move on to another one. For the
children, it would have been better if these people had never been born. It is the permanent
nature of the home that validates the community rather than the fact that the work is carried
out with intelligence. Despite this, there are still people in positions of responsibility who
choose to place young people in institutions, as in the South of Italy, or in residential
communities rather than in families or genuine family homes. The relational damage that
sometimes manifests itself in adult years as antisocial tendencies should be prevented and as
Bettelheim2 writes in A Good Enough Parent people who have received the right parental
and educational care possess a rich, gratifying inner life that makes them feel happy with
themselves, whatever may happen to them during their life. Remember the film of
Roberto Benigni Life is Beautiful
This is the heart of the matter, in that legislators clearly acknowledge the priority of family
and community as provided for by Law 149, but they insist on ruling in favour of experiences
that are not of this nature and Regional legislation is awash with communities claiming to be
as families but run by education professionals working to set hours. This bearing in mind
that, in one of his studies of the psycho-affective development of two groups of children,
Spitz looked first at a group of children whose mothers were in prison and able to care
directly for their children, providing them with more quality care than the second group
placed in an orphanage who, although in a healthy environment with an excellent diet, were
deprived of individual relationships, with care given mainly by education professionals. He
called this phenomenon hospitalism, meaning the repeated and prolonged absence of a
parental figure.
What are the real needs of those seeking help?
Above all, there is need of a significant stable relationship that makes it possible to enter into
a relationship with a significant you who knows how to accommodate real, profound
needs.
In order to heal the wounds of those seeking help, it is necessary to provide a welcoming
1
2

Winnicot D.W. Deprivation and Deliquency, 1984, page..

Bruno Bettelheim: A Good Enough Parent , April 1988

environment that becomes therapeutic in that it is able to start from the needs of the other
person and provide the companionship necessary to banish the state of existential, interior
loneliness that the person is experiencing. This sharing provides the communion necessary
for rediscovering the meaning of existence and a taste for life.
A true family home or family community able to welcome people with a diversity of needs
and characters, like an extended family, can provide a stable life of togetherness with the
continuity of at least two adults, preferably a married couple with children or a properly
trained man or woman who have made a vocational choice to share a direct bond with
adults and children in difficulty, offering them a personal relationship that is parental in
nature in a family environment. It is necessary to start from the real needs of poor people.
The pedagogical challenge arising from this is to provide education and an upbringing
through sharing ones life with such people. Only too often there is a tendency to respond
with material assistance, with handouts, when what the people need is a relationship. Such
people should not be seen in terms of their limitations. A person is not just his or her error, or
disability but rather an original individual with positive potential.
The parental figures
These are the persons who have chosen to become a mother or father to people who are
unloved because of some serious mental or physical disability, or because they are teenagers
at risk, or anyone in a real situation of abandonment. By making a conscious, altruistic life
choice to give their lives to the ones they love, they provide a practical demonstration of
maturity in life. They become companions in a relationship and family members for people
otherwise not welcomed. Filling all these important roles, they are precise, always present
and
unique
figures.
With over thirty years experience of family homes, with over three hundred communities
worldwide, the Pope John XXIII Community Association is able to provide a unique, original
set of skills that benefit many people who would otherwise be condemned to total
institutionalisation in prisons, nursing homes, rehabilitation centres and rest homes.
The response given by true family homes can be temporary or permanent, according to that
persons need.
The testimony of Patty who, with her husband Roberto, parents of a family home can be
found in Father Benzis book Onora Tuo Figlio e Tua Figlia (Honour Your Son and Your
Daughter) (p.74) and in the degree dissertation La Casa Famiglia APG23 - tra carisma ed
educazione (The APG 23 Family Home - between charism and education) (p 45).
The complementary nature of the family environment
In addition to the permanent parental figures that live in the family home twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week, twelve months of the year, other people are an essential
complementary aspect of the environment. The people welcomed then, live with normallyabled people and are considered a gift, a unique, original blessing. In a family home, little
children may live with old people that become their grandparents and young people. Each
human resource contributes to the complementarity and the rich diversity of age and
situations completes the family group and provides mutual help and support. The diversity is
deliberate
and
of
great
value.
It is not natural to place people according to their need or usage, when the group consists of

just children, teenagers or people with disabilities. Such homogeneous communities carry
within them the potential for a pathological notion of the self, continually reflected in the
others.
Diversity as a resource
All APG23 family homes, despite being based on the vocation of the community and the
pedagogy of sharing, are different from one another. This ensures that the specific
characteristics of each family home become a secure base for the different personalities of
the people welcomed in. Each person is able to identify a reality that is like his or her very
own home. Many people need a family home in which the parental figures are a married
couple; others find their identity and their path with single parental figures.
The winning combination is where, taking into account each persons own story, people find
other people who love them and make them feel useful and important. This creates a new,
positive relationship, even in situations presented as irretrievable, in which the educational
experience means taking on responsibility, welcoming and taking care of others in their
absolute otherness.
In an APG23 family home, people on the edge are considered a gift and a resource. Those
whom society considers an encumbrance because of their serious relational problems, their
disabilities, their loneliness and feeling of abandonment, are recognised as people within the
family home, a gift and a resource. Then, the family home becomes a core radiating a new
vital life, in which people are placed at the centre and their dignity protected, where they are
invited to cooperate according to their potential for the common good.
Vittorino Andreoli, interviewed after the death of Father Oreste Benzi, said as a psychiatrist I
can say that I have never met anyone who believed so strongly in the family, in the
relationship between mother, father and children, as a place of charity. An extended family
that is therapeutic, free from theories and complications of a sociological or pastoral
theological nature. Families that are not socialised communities but homes into which
people are welcomed, in their everyday ordinariness, be they drug addicts, prostitutes,
people with illnesses, problem teenagers, homeless people, all working together to construct
a fraternal climate in a natural human fashion.
Burnout syndrome
Burnout tends to happen to people involved in a highly demanding, all-consuming social
relationship
or
work
situation.
In APG23 family homes and in many family communities, in addition to pedagogical
training, people live their lives as a choice, a religious vocation as the foundation for
developing
the
pedagogy
of
listening
and
sharing.
In residential communities there is a high staff turnover with a great deal of job-changing,
while family homes are run by carers who for decades have gained experience in living a life
of sharing, with continuity and skill, even in the face of innumerable difficulties.
The strong motivation, the life in faith, the community support and the supervision of the
parental figures are the fabric within which sufficient balance can be achieved to create a
secure base for the people welcomed in. Just think about Franca in Bangladesh, Tina in
Zambia, Doriana in Veneto, Marcella in Piemonte, who have been in the front line for
decades, the mothers of vocation. This is a witness of love that is both pedagogical and
altruistic, asking nothing in return.

The network
A community that shares and belongs to all that choose it becomes a great family whose
boundaries are both flexible and strong. The spirit of communion in its uniqueness creates
wellbeing
and
both
individual
and
community
growth.
In addition to the family homes, emergency shelters become a safe place for people facing
desperate situations and great suffering. The cooperatives and day centres provide
opportunities for work for people who are usually excluded from the world of work. Open
families offer many children and young people the opportunity to find a family to offer them
care and love on a temporary basis until it is possible to return to their original family. Youth
groups, summer and winter sharing camps and theatre workshops are all places for people to
get together, to enjoy their free time in a space for socialising and shared creativity.
Conscientious objectors have chosen to live a non-violent life, opting for real justice living
alongside the weakest people. Volunteers act on their wish to serve and support the parental
figures.
By putting together our resources, skills and also through sharing of goods and returning to
the community anything that is not strictly necessary for a dignified existence, we create a
communion with a modest lifestyle made of the bare essentials in which everyone takes
according to their real, shared needs.
One-on-one relationships
In APG23 family homes the irreplaceable mother-child relationship is restored for many
young people who have been deprived of that experience. One-on-one relationships
welcome each person as a unique individual and help him or her as they learn to live
together with the other people in the home.
The paternal figure also becomes a reassuring presence setting the welcomed child on a
path to achieving possible goals and above all, supporting him or her and providing security.
.
Education and upbringing
The art of education, in its widest, holistic sense, means helping others to embark on a path
toward
autonomy
and
to
develop
their
specific
talents.
In family homes taking part in the running of the family home is a therapy in itself. People
are transformed from being merely objects of assistance to playing a constructive part in the
relationships within the home, each person contributing according to his/her own role and
abilities.
The day-to-day rules of conduct also become useful boundaries serving the liberty of
everyone
and
helping
people
to
be
of
service
to
each
other.
Within the social context, family homes appear anti-conformist by opening up to all who
knocks at the door. This is life in its very essence with a commitment to removing the causes
that
produce
need
and,
at
times,
marginalisation.
This alternative lifestyle, while it is fully integrated into the social fabric, gives young people
who come with a troubled past the space to liberate themselves and reaffirm themselves in a
new
identity.
Here they feel welcome because they are considered of value and important, regardless of
their past. While this may be an arduous journey, it allows them to restore their faith in
themselves and in others.

.
Openings within society
As well as the parental figures, the young people placed in family homes are also offered the
chance to go to school with others. Children with serious disabilities are also able to do this
with
the
proper
support,
in
the
spirit
of
integration.
The cooperatives offer people with mental disorders a workplace, deepening their identity
and
self-perception
as
productive,
creative
participants.
Free time too can be a productive time, with sports groups and other activities engaged in
during the year (swimming, skiing, tennis, volleyball, football, riding therapy) giving young
people the space to develop their full potential, including physical fitness and skills at games.
In the local area, in parishes, in schools, during leisure time, the family home becomes like
the village spring, a place where everyone can come to quench their thirst at particularly
arduous times in their life. Cool, running water for everyone, Jesus at the centre of our heart
so He can become the heart of the world.
The culture of vital new worlds
The family home is a dynamic place that creates and encourages life, involves young people,
holds dialogue with families and keeps track of institutions. It is a living entity within the
community, brimming with opportunities for sharing. The experience of sharing is appealing,
something that attracts men and women of good will. People come first in this institution and
it is organised to favour the wellbeing of everyone. People with needs are considered a gift
and a resource, they are original individuals, leading players, those who construct life stories
and, if they wish, they can stay there over the age of eighteen.
The right to a family
The family home works for the family so that everyone, if possible, can stay in his/her family of
origin. It works for foster care in that it makes it possible for children to be given significant
figures in their life if or when children, even if only for a short time, are unable to stay with
their own parents. The family home nurtures the most profound needs of the person, needs
that are physical, mental, relational and spiritual. For some, it will become a new family.
There is a mutual feeling of belonging. The family home provides a timely opening, right
from the beginning when welcoming in new-borns with disabilities while they are waiting for
adoption, mothers that were thinking of having an abortion but, once given the right support,
are able to accept their miracle.
Creativity in educational work
The family homes of the Pope John XXIII Community came into being in 1973 as an
alternative to institutionalisation, a family presence creating a local community. They are
flexible
environments,
free
from
rigid,
over-arching
structures.
They are often, seen, by so-called professional experts, as a last resort for desperate cases.
Thanks be to God and to the commitment of those people sharing directly in the family
homes, the results are highly satisfactory, despite the dedication required and the difficulties
encountered on the way. The work is therapeutic reaching the deepest needs of people who
find relief in the new situation where at last there is someone prepared to enter into a

relationship with them, allowing them to belong to someone. If they so wish, the community
can become their new reality, the springboard for reaching their full maturity.
Indeed, a true family home is by nature a therapeutic environment. There is a notable
improvement in the healing process, particularly for those with mental disorders and
sociability problems. These people feel important because they have been chosen, out of
pure, disinterested love. These young people develop self-respect because they feel that their
new parental figures have respect for them. They start to believe in themselves because there
is someone who really believes in them. It is the Pygmalion effect applied within the family.
Education in the family home means re-awaking the concept of RESILIENCE, a term coined
by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Boris Cyrulnik and borrowed from physics, indicating
the capacity of a material to resist sudden shocks without breaking. He conceived the
concept of resilience after spending his life exploring how children who have undergone
traumatic events are able to overcome the violence they have suffered to become happy
adults. Psychological resilience is the capacity to deal in a positive manner with traumatic
events and to reorganise your life in the face of such difficulties. However, being resistant is
more than merely resisting, it means transforming suffering into strength, vulnerability into
capacity. Educating for resilience requires the ability to build solidarity networks that
encourage the strengthening of the family and environmental factors necessary to develop it.
Sharing and hope
People who live in family homes as welcoming parents make a permanent life choice that is
gratuitous and competent. They develop the pedagogy of sharing as a way of being. They do
not accept the concept of the irretrievable, the globally irreversible. They turn instead to the
pedagogy of hope, in that everyone has capacities and resources to put to the service of
others.
The challenge
Sharing with the poorest people is possible and attainable. Persons that society considers an
encumbrance because they have serious relational problems, disabilities or are suffering from
a sense of loneliness and abandonment actually are the starting point for the community,
laying
the
foundations
for
the
reunification
of
the
human
race.
The dream is the alterocentric society in which everyone maintains his/her own dignity,
his/her own family to be part of, a home to live in, and a work that enables them to
contribute to the growth of humanity. But we want to state that it is not enough to shoulder
our brothers cross, we need to tell those who make those crosses to stop. You cant give
food to the starving and then cheerily go arm in arm with those who do the starving. A
commitment to justice is fundamental. We address those who have the power to oppress or
to liberate in order that the causes of injustice may be removed.
The madness of the cross
Behind that disfigured, depressed, ill-treated, dying face we see the icon of an Other, God
who is with us, Jesus Christ in our midst and His desire to mingle with the excluded
becoming their travelling companion. The excluded, the poor become those who reveal the
face of Christ and all of us shoulder the burden of the suffering of humanity, proclaiming this

joyfully for all to hear. The family home is the place in which the burden is shouldered,
where the burden of peoples suffering and illness is plain to see and to share. It is our daily
bread. It is indeed, the parental figures that welcome people in their entirety, caring for them
in their pain and distress. We are all saved together because the person being listened to has
values that the listener does not, and vice versa. Those who care and share life with people
that cannot manage on their own, experience a great joy. Joy is the best testimony that the
love of God is among us. In true family homes, we can breathe and taste the religious sense
and its consequences: peace, serenity, joy and equilibrium. This is no mere sociological task,
rather it is an authentic religious inspiration to render visible the Christian message in the
Catholic, Christian faith. But it is lived in the world, working together for a more just,
altruistic society, according to the civilisation of love as expressed by Pope Paul VI. We
have good partnerships with the health and social services; also with all those volunteers
who offer to help the parental figures. The work of conscientious objectors has played a
major role in this, many of whom have now become members of a community that has
shown to be a community with a constructive conscience that is critical of current society.
True hope
Those who are welcomed in and given a home become children of the whole Community
in the awareness that God chose those who by human standards are fools to shame the
wise; he chose those who by human standards are weak to shame the strong. True wisdom
is that which we receive in order to be able to live a life in simplicity, in the spirit of
fraternity that creates a feeling of celebration and an approach to life that is essentially
positive and optimistic, that is able to live with difficulties, facing up to them as an
opportunity for growth.
A new identity
Those welcomed into family homes are often presented as beyond recovery. In reality the
discarded stone can become the corner stone, the strongest point in the home.
We become like you and you are like us. The humblest become those who reveal the story
of God and the wonders of His works. As Victor Frankl said in Letters of a Survivor. What
saved me from the death camp to help people to escape from uncertainty and disorientation
or to give them the opportunity to face up to their difficulties and the limits of existence, you
need to believe with them and in them. Frankl understood that the feeling of pain is not, as
usually and spontaneously happens, searched for in the past, but in the future, in a job to be
done, in a project that transcends the ill that has been suffered.
You enter into the celebration of life, recovering your suffering in gratitude, in restoring your
happiness, becoming kind, joyful, generous and responsible.
Father Benzi and the Pope John XXIII Community bring to the Church and to society the
transition from assistance to sharing, a new vision put into practice that opens up new
pathways and new resources, in which the family is restored to its place as the basic and
fundamental unit of society and supported economically and by the law.
A request that cannot be ignored
Creating an integrated system of action and social services requires implementing the
principle of subsidiarity. This means that the regional authorities must adopt an attitude that

sees them ready to provide help, support, promotion and development to smaller
intermediate social entities such as the family associations and communities that have
something unique and original to offer the wider community. The state and the local
authorities must recognise and facilitate third sector bodies, not-for-profit organisations and
religious entities recognised by the state. They must respect citizens right to choose when
there is differentiation of the services. A secular state must guarantee those community
experiences that are the fruit of a vocation, of a summons from God, while obviously using
the relevant committees to check the quality of the results. If the local services working in the
field and knowing the area, its people and their needs, have for decades trusted in one of
these bodies, also justifying economic assistance, it means that the results are clearly
satisfactory from the point of view of the quality of relationships, care, assistance and
integration.
The experience gained in innovative projects should be checked in the field, rather than by a
priori academic study. We are asking for recognition for this organisation that has already
gained solid experience in Italy, being its positive results scientifically tested.
As Professor Henry3, lecturer in the psychology of disability and rehabilitation, said: when
social services managed by professional experts have exhausted their available
organisational and technical resources without obtaining the expected results, they often
have no other choice than to place their trust in that alternative system of family
communities and true family homes for the most difficult and desperate cases that, in the
absence of a response, would represent unacceptable failure.
The art of educating, in other words the pedagogy of education, requires these alternatives to
be granted official recognition for the indispensable contribution they make to the altero
centric society and the civilisation of love.