i Ken lgbt met with the Bishop of Naples for an hearing with S.E. Cardinal

VERSIONE ITALIANA

Napoli 01/07/2017 At 10:30 am a delegation of the association iKen met with the Bishop of Naples for an hearing with S.E. Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe. This is the second time that the association met with the Metropolitan Bishop and it is a pleasant and exceptional circumstance that has the historical character of the encounter of mutual differences. A representative delegation of the different individuals that make up iKen, we are first of all “people”, as they pointed out, people who have asked the Bishop of Naples to be “the other side” on which the bridge of dialogue must lay its foundations for a culture of dialogue, respect and collaboration. The protagonists are people on the margins of society, the latter and the last, a different world compared to that of Catholic Caritas and Civitas of social promotion and communities: the Catholic and confessional on one side, and the secular and civic society of LGBT association *. Starring S.E. Crescenzio Sepe and the president of iKen Carlos Cremona, who from 2009 continue their journey of mutual respect and listening to different and complementary observers in a city in which the social status increasingly appears distant and disinterested in the themes that involve hopeless people. A long and deep encounter in which the Cardinal has listened to the narrative of recent achievements such as the Chromatica Festival (LGBT Choral Festival organized by iKen at San Carlo in Naples in collaboration with the Campania Region) and the future projects of the First Aid House for gay, lesbian and transgenders, that will open in September in Naples in a flat confiscated to the Organized Crime and that will be co-funded by the Department of Youth and National Civil Protection. Significant was the attention of S.E. Sepe to the problems and narrative of the story of two transgender delegates, Rossella Dorio and Gina Piscitelli. In particular, we were impressed by S. E.’s interest in the issues of the urban and national emergency for trans people who are seeking jobs and trying to quit prostitution and who seek support and help to set up work paths to reach their autonomy. The perspective offered by iKen was, though citing the valuable charity work done by the Parthenopean curia for the excluded and the most fragile people, to find new ways to engage people, who are no longer in their youth, who want to change their lifestyle to be entitled to a chance to find the dignity lost, together with their jobs, due to the way they were perceived and to discrimination. Another topic proposed was the impossibility of accessing dual conditions for the start-up of self-employment and construction of places where people can cultivate and develop skills and professionalism without discrimination. Very fond of the compliments received by the Cardinal about the commitment of the association in the corAcor musical project related by the coordinator Gerardo Papa and the success received for Cromatica 2017, S.E. talked about how the Curia also used music to involve young people and take them away from the streets and from criminal environments, and he hopes that music will be a ground of union thanks to knowledge coming from the experiences in the Diocesi and the corAcor. The meeting ended with the embrace of the mothers Annamaria Salomone and Lucia Trapanese, part of a family in the lives of their gay children and witnesses that love is most of all welcoming the others, especially in Catholic families, because in faith there is love and not hatred. For this occasion a commemorative plaque was given to the meeting and a copy of the prayer at San Gennaro written by Francesco Giampietro and Carlo Cremona asked the Patron of Naples to know who is the genius who invented “normality”, a Written prayer to ask the Holy Patron to do the miracle, to defeat homophobia and violence, and to make “Ammore” prevail over everything . As a greeting for S.E. Sepe has donated to all of them a prayer card of Our Lady that contains her typical blessing (happily received by us) “Che A’ Maronn v’accumpagn” (May She always be with you)