By Joe Pisani
ROME- On a lonely night during the COVID pandemic, Luca Badetti, a theology professor in Rome, was sitting on the sand near the Mediterranean. During the Italian lockdown, anxiety and separation seemed to afflict everyone’s lives. There was so much uncertainty, he thought, as ideas began forming for a book he would write about “the night” that touches the human soul.
“The night that was being lived out was something deeper, vaster and less tangible. It was a sense of disorientation caused by a pandemic that separated individuals, halted future planning and brought into question some of the structures people had based their lives on,” said Dr. Badetti, Professor and Coordinator of Service Learning at Loyola University Chicago, John Felice Rome Center.
On that evening, as he watched people passing, he says, “It seemed that there was a big question mark hovering in the air, comprising questions like ‘Where are we going? Why? And ‘What is going to happen?’”
Born in Rome and raised in Stamford, Dr. Badetti says from those initial experiences, his latest book was conceived. “Hope in Darkness: Leaving Night,” which was published by Paulist Press, has been described as “a contemplation of five simple and yet profound questions: Who, What, Why, Where and When?”
The purpose of the book is to help people “find hope in moments of disorientation.”
“During moments of disorientation, crisis and loss,” he says, “we may grapple with questions that have to do with identity (who we are), community (where do we find support and belonging), time (when will what we wait for come about), reality and meaning (what are we living and why or what for).
His book refers to these questions as the 5 W’s, which we must answer. He encourages us to live through the questions rather than avoiding them or pushing them aside because answering them will ultimately lead to a “hopeful horizon and new life direction.”
Night is a common theme in the New Testament, he says. Night can connote betrayal and hardship as in the Agony in the Garden that Jesus suffered. But night also can connote freedom and liberation as when St. Peter and the apostles were freed from jail by an angel.
“My book invites readers to live through their nights with fresh hope,” Dr. Badetti says. “It invites them to become aware of their moments of disorientation and difficulty, face the questions that arise through them, and find through those very questions spaces of hope they might not have imagined before.”
The book contains stories of parents, workers, young adults, refugees, the homeless and the disabled, who are dealing with their personal “nights,” and it includes reflections about our spiritual and psychological needs.
“I bring together a variety of experiences,” he says. “Hopefully, people won’t fall into the trap of thinking, ‘Oh, it’s about that group of people, so it doesn’t speak to me’ … because it does.”
Dr. Badetti returned to his native Rome to teach theology at the John Felice Rome Center of Loyola University Chicago. He also coordinates Service Learning and the First Year Experience. As part of Service Learning, he encourages students to combine in-classroom learning with reflective engagement with marginalized communities in Rome. The First Year Experience supports first-year students as they transition and grow into the experience of a new educational context, a new country, and a new community.
In 1998, his family moved to Stamford, and he graduated from Westhill High School. He went to Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio where he received a degree in theology and communications and a minor in philosophy and mental health and human services.
He received a master’s in clinical psychology from the Institute for Psychological Studies in Arlington, Va., and a doctorate in disability studies from the University of Illinois, Chicago.
While he was a student at Franciscan University, he began reading about L’Arche communities, consisting of homes and workplaces where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers in a spirit of simplicity. He began volunteering at a Massachusetts community outside of Boston and later served as Director of Community Life at L’Arche Chicago.
L’Arche communities provide homes and workplaces where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together as peers in a spirit of simplicity. “L’Arche” is French for “the ark,” referring to Noah’s Ark, a symbol for refuge and the covenant between God and humanity.
While in Chicago, he taught at Loyola University’s Institute for Pastoral Studies and DePaul University’s Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies program.
His first book, “I Believe in You,” is a compilation of stories about how people with disabilities can widen our understanding of ourselves and of God.
