SAT, FEB 18, 2023
8:15 PM ET | FLOOR 2

Hope Reborn

A presentation on Comunità Cenacolo, with Albino Aragno, director of the Cenacolo Communities in America, and Ian Ross, elementary school teacher, moderated by Matteo Tinti, regional sales manager at MEI

Comunità Cenacolo is a Christian association founded by the Italian nun Mother Elvira Petrozzi in 1983 to welcome desperate young people who are suffering from the strains of life and may have turned to drug addiction, alcohol, or substance abuse. Since then, Cenacolo has opened various communities in the U.S. The ways young people and those who struggle come to Cenacolo are often different, but all are united by suffering. They’re united by this cross, and it is not just drug addiction, but more so the inability to love and live one’s life. From the beginning, Mother Elvira loved to define the Comunità Cenacolo journey as a “School of Life,” explaining what the Community wants to offer to people. Those who ask for help learn to live life in all of its different aspects: joy, pain, fatigue, friendship, celebration, simplicity, struggle, fear, courage, fragility…

Over the years, this journey has become a source of hope and salvation not only for many who have been dependent on drugs and distractions, but also for those who crave to encounter a true answer to the suffering they have experienced. They search for a solution to the deep search for meaning in their life. The Encounter is fortunate to welcome the witnesses of Albino Aragno, the director of the various Cenacolo Communities in the U.S., and Ian Ross, an elementary school teacher who spent 4 years in the Cenacolo Community.