Paul KeenanArgentine missionary Natalia Fassano shares her story
Paul Sanchez
On March 12, 2014 there was much reflection about the first anniversary of the selection of Pope Francis and all that has happened in the first year of his papacy. To say that the media cast Pope Francis as a ‘star’ in his first year is an understatement. While the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a proud Italian-Argentine, became an instant star, his selection as Pope made one Italian-Argentine missionary in Brooklyn a star as well. Natalia Fassano, an Italian-Argentine of whom seven of her eight great-grandparents were Italian immigrants to Argentina, found herself thrust in the spotlight as the media was very interested in what this missionary had to say about her fellow Italian-Argentine becoming Pope.
Natalia Fassano, a lay consecrated missionary who has dedicated her life to the France-based Catholic volunteer movement called Heart’s Home (www.heartshomeusa.org), found 2013 to be a year in which media coverage was abundant. First, on the evening of the selection of Pope Francis, WABC News did a news segment on the Brooklyn-based missionary. That television news segment was followed by an article in Oggi, the only Italian-language daily newspaper in the US. The article was picked up in publications in Italy; it even appeared in Libero Gossip, a prominent celebrity gossip tabloid in Italy. Natalia was interviewed for a feature article in El Diario/LaPrensa, the New York-based publication which is the largest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the US, and later this article was used in other newspapers in the ImpreMedia family of Spanish-language newspapers throughout the US. The Tablet, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, featured her story. Other media coverage included a CBS radio interview as well as an interview on Net Catholic TV. The requests for interviews still continue.
Ancestral home
Growing up as the oldest of six children in Santa Fe, the Italian influence was part of Natalia’s growing up. “My Dad has more of an Argentinian-Italian character, outspoken, extroverted. My Mum would tell me stories about her own grandmother and her immigration from Naples to Argentina. Tales of the Italian heritage on both sides of my family were a major part of my upbringing, as it is for most Italian-Argentine families.”
It was while living and working in her home city of Santa Fe that Natalia became acquainted with the missionary volunteer organisation Heart’s Home.
“As much as I loved my family and friends, my boyfriend, my parish community, my profession and my students, this missionary life was much greater! The Lord was concretely present and provoking me to follow always further, through the faces of these poor people who came into my life.
Upon joining Heart’s Home as a volunteer, the Italian-Argentine was thrilled to learn she would be sent to the Heart’s Home mission in Naples, the ancestral land of her great-grandparents. Founded in 1990, Heart’s Home is an international Catholic volunteer organisation in which young Catholics devote at least 14 months to helping the poor and the most suffering in the world. Heart’s Home has 46 mission centres in 24 different countries, Since its founding, the organisation has trained over 1, 400 volunteers of 38 different nationalities. Community life includes daily rosary and daily Mass. Their goal is to act as friends to the most suffering and most lonely people.
Heart’s Home
After serving as a Heart’s Home volunteer for two years, Natalia decided she wanted to stay on with Heart’s Home as her life’s vocation and joined their lay consecrated fraternity. Many volunteers in the last 24 years have wanted to continue in Heart’s Home, so in addition to a lay consecrated fraternity, there was an order of nuns formed, the Sisters of God’s Presence, and a fraternity of priests, the Sacerdotal Molokai Fraternity. All three of these branches of permanent Heart’s Home missionaries work alongside the young Catholics who volunteer.
Currently, Natalia is in her third year of missionary work at Heart’s Home in Brooklyn, a mission that started in the Bronx in 2003 and moved to Brooklyn in 2008. While the New York mission of Heart’s Home has mostly ministered to Spanish-speaking people of various nationalities, Natalia is the first Latino missionary as most of the missionaries in New York community have been from France.
On March 3, 2013 when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen as Pope, Natalia was shocked that the new Pope was not only Argentine, but a fellow Italian-Argentine. “It was like winning the World Cup,” she commented.
Famous
Natalia was immediately taken by the new Pope’s statement that “the Church of Rome needs to be the first example of charity to the rest of the Churches around the world”. She felt that this statement by Pope Francis was very telling.
“This charity, this faith, this hope reflects what Italians brought to Argentina throughout the last century; let us humbly and graciously bring it back ‘Argentinised’ to the city where charity, hope and faith are called to be the ‘culture’ to be exported worldwide.”
Since Pope Francis immediately edged out soccer star Lionel Messi as the most famous Italian-Argentine Natalia Fassano has carved out her own niche as a famous Italian-Argentine, likely being the first example of the ‘Francis effect’. She enjoys the interviews she gives to both the Catholic and secular media because it allows her to speak about her life as a Catholic missionary in a way to inform other young people about volunteering as a Catholic missionary serving the poor. When asked over a year into Pope Francis’ papacy what it means to her to have a fellow Argentine as Pope, she replied, “It is even better than winning the world Cup!”