Lampedusa is an island that does not isolate you, with a strategic location from every point of view; its people are characterised by being welcoming, they are of frontier mind and heart. The parish is always close to the people and on the periphery of humanity, which for various reasons arrives on the island, no wonder that its patron saint is Our Lady of Porto Salvo.

Sr. Nilda Trejo of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Good and Perpetual Help shares her experience living on this island with the intercongregational community

Community as mission

I have been part of a community of diverse charisms and cultures with a common mission: the immigrants. Visits to families and especially to the sick, daily holy mass, rosary, and Eucharistic adoration, in some cases carrying Jesus in the Eucharist; all this with and from the parish. 
Our community life is simple and evangelical, everything is proclamation; one of the greatest challenges was to make synodal decisions in fraternity, discerning and agreeing on what responded most to the mission; overcoming, harmonising, and agreeing one's own decision with the others. Every day I was more and more surprised how the diversity among us could create so much communion in the confrontation that allowed us to know each other's thoughts, feelings, and spirituality. Lauds was the only prayer as a rule to be prayed in common, the other prayers and the personal prayer were free so that meeting in our small chapel made us live that moment of grace and communion among us, that free time with Jesus and the proposals of retreats, pilgrimages, stories of saints... served as motivation among us to strengthen each other spiritually.

The paradox

When they arrive, they do so strip of everything and in some cases even of their clothes, but this is still not the cruellest thing, in many cases even their dignity and even their desire to live and continue fighting has been taken away, as in the case of someone who, tired of the struggle and defeated, threw himself into the sea. Deciding to embark to cross the Mediterranean is to risk losing one's life by shipwreck, by giving it up so that others may arrive safely. I have seen cases of people who, faced with the end of the petrol and the sinking boat, decided to swim themselves alongside the boat so that everyone could reach a safe port, and when they disembarked, we heard them thank God that none of them were lost. 
The disembarkations that take place after five or more days at sea show the extent to which humanity is capable of resisting physically, morally, psychologically, and spiritually. To understand this situation, we can think about how they can spend five days in a boat without being able to move from where they are, without even thinking about going to the toilet, because they arrive dehydrated and with kidney problems, in short, they do not drink water because they cannot urinate, in extreme cases they urinate on themselves. The women are the ones who suffer the most, especially if they have been made pregnant on a long journey and have to give birth in the desert or at sea. The love with which they protect their babies for days or weeks on end is admirable. Sadly, I knew the case of a young woman who lost her baby at sea during a boat transfer. It was a case where only the sisters could comfort her, and not only that, they continue to accompany and care for her. 

In one of the disembarks so many arrived and among them a group of young people of which one 28 years old from Syria, arrived lifeless because of his location close to the petrol tank, it is the place of those who pay less. It pained me so much to see that he had lost everything even his life. In this moment of anger with our humanity, that in some cases forces them to submit to this point, I begin to see how all of us on the dock wanted to give this young man what he lacked in life: all the dignity showed by the respect with which they treated his body as placed it in a coffin, the silence and the prayer of a young Muslim and mine while they moved him to continue with the legal steps. The immigrant person does not count for anyone, as he becomes a clandestine. From the moment he enters the Mediterranean Sea, he does not belong to anyone... this is why his dead body takes on a value that makes us human and makes us say that all is not lost. Along with him there were four other young people who were taken by ambulance, there was one who was sitting on the dock in a state of shock at the situation, words were superfluous. I just clasped my hands in his and looked him in the eyes, expressing. To this he answered me with a gesture, taking his right hand to his heart, later I was told that what he was saying to me was: thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here. 

Without going into more complex issues such as political and social issues, what is done in the dock is to attend to the existential person who is in that particular circumstance of vulnerability. This makes you come out of selfishness and give help even when, thinking about it and with good reason, you should not do it because it is the responsibility of others. But as a commander of the Forces said, even the most hardened person here is moved, moved to react and to come to the aid. 

Go out to find yourself

Coming out of oneself is not easy, it is like Nicodemus' question: Can a person be born again? To this the question is: Can I come out of myself, is this coming out a return to the deepest origin for which I was called?
On the dock you meet different NGOs from different creeds such as Evangelicals, Methodists, Catholics, and others; but our creed is not the most important thing, but rather to save the human person in a state of vulnerability. A situation that moved me very much was the one where people in a boat go into the sea to be rescued, and on that occasion, there were families.... I am a consecrated woman and when I entered, I always wanted to help others and the word ‘save’ was always in my mind, and the question ‘From what, from whom, to whom’ (concretely) and that day when the children of this family were thanking them, I understood how much it is possible to save and what it means to give one's life today for others as Jesus did, because they risk their own life to save the life of others. Something peculiar also happens among those of us who cooperate in this network of humanisation, in those few minutes when we see each other, we just thank each other for what we do, and I believe that this feeds us back in faith and hope with this gratuitous gesture of charity that is sincere and heartfelt. 
To risk one's life, so that others may live is a madness; that makes us human, Christian, and consecrated for humanity. So today the question is: Who am I saving? This answer measures the periphery in which I find myself.
To go out of oneself in one's own environment implies taking risks to save... in short, to give one's life. It is madness for the Greeks and a scandal for the Jews, but for us it is salvation for our brothers and sisters and for ourselves; this is a mission of announcing to the world that we can live among brothers and sisters, that diversity enriches us, creates communion and reminds us of what Jesus told us: ‘Be one so that the world may believe’ Thank you Jesus, because in Lampedusa, like our immigrant brothers and sisters, you invite us to save ourselves and in a certain sense they also save us. 

Acknowledgements

To God who always goes out to meet and save, to the Church for its charitable presence creating communion in diversity, to the parish for being close and on the frontier, to the people of Lampedusa for its generosity and universality, to the UISG for allowing itself to be guided by the Spirit and responding to the cry of the immigrants and to the request of Pope Francis, to the volunteers with whom I shared life, mission and passion for humanity, to the unforgettable community of Sisters with whom I shared forty days for teaching me to discern and make a choice for mission, to my congregation for their trust and desire to help in our poverty. 
I conclude my testimony with a part of the prayer that Pope Francis addressed to Our Lady of Porto Salvo during his visit to Lampedusa in 2013, praying for all those who never tire of doing and seeking good on the island that unites continents and brothers:

Protectress of migrants and itinerant people, help with maternal care the men, women and children forced to flee their lands in search of peace and hope (…) Model of charity, bless all men and women of good will, who welcome and serve those who “have docked” on this land: may the gift received and given be the seed that will bear the fruit of new fraternal bonds and the dawn of world peace.