That habit of asking questions

I like asking questions, but I do not expect to receive answers. It is a pleasure, a curiosity, which begins with
myself. I asked my first “serious” ones at the age of fourteen, prompted by the generous witness of four
sisters dealing with a crowd of street children in Naples: “How does one become a Christian?” I asked.

“You need spiritual direction,” the Mother Superior replied, giving me some contacts. That is how I met Fr Rotelli,
who gave me a programme: “prayer and service”. It was a long discernment, also marked by refusals. The
many forms of poverty in my neighbourhood, which I shared and faced with commitment alongside other
young people, gave rise to another question: “What if the Lord were seriously asking me to become a priest?”

Other people’s questions

Philosophy is the privileged place where I have practised this art of questioning. After graduating, I entered
the novitiate, a privileged time for a face-to-face relationship with God. Then came regency in Albania, a
precious experience of love received. Theology followed in Naples, that “incarnate” theology which is
likewise born from questions, this time asked by people—in the street, in the parish, at celebrations, over
meals and in group meetings. In this way an opening appeared which only Christ, the Word that became life,
was able to fill. At times the emptiness peeps out again… but the promise remains.

Today and its questions

I currently live in Rome, where I teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University, devoting myself above all to
investigating the relationship between words and things, to language that creates order, and to the discovery
that not everything can be said. Three questions are accompanying me at present. How can we build freer
channels of information? It is increasingly evident that the way fundamental news is communicated is
heavily marked by political purposes. It is difficult to find information that is free and critical. The way news
is disseminated seems aimed at confirming the actions of governments. This makes me reflect on the
representation of reality, but also on the citizen’s right to receive objective information. As Jesuits, we should
have the strength to denounce this mechanism and try to generate new paths.

What is the favourable moment for proclamation? I have the impression that youth is no longer the most
fruitful time. The Gospel speaks to a life that has experienced failure and wounds; it speaks to people who
have sought their own answers and found themselves disappointed. All this no longer happens during youth,
when one is still fully immersed in a kind of delusion of omnipotence, surrounded by emotionally intense
stimuli, and so carefully protected as not truly to see the hardships of life. This leads me to think that the
favourable moment in our age has shifted later. Perhaps we need to address those groups of adults, single
people or young families, who carry significant life experience and are reflecting on their future.

How can we foster the inevitable attitude of discernment? Having explored this subject above all at the level
of spiritual theory and practice, I am now trying to address it also in my academic research, on the
philosophical level. I believe that discernment is founded on the very structure of reality. It is the way reality
is made, in metaphysical terms, that inevitably requires human beings to discern. Reality bears the marks of
uncertainty, complexity and temporality: elements that require not only a nuanced evaluation but also a
choice. Indeed, deciding is the fundamental and unavoidable attitude of human existence.