The Embrace of God's Mercy: Mother Elvira and the Rise of Community Cenacolo

On July 16, 1983, in an abandoned house on an Italian hillside, Sister Rita Petrozzi, known today as Mother Elvira, opened Comunità Cenacolo. That dilapidated building quickly became God's hope-filled answer to the desperate cries of the many lost, lonely, drug-addicted young people who soon began knocking on its door, seeking to be reborn. A potent apostolate was born.

Today barely thirty-six years later Comunità Cenacolo consists of seventy houses stretched across the globe that welcome thousands of young people struggling with drug or alcohol addictions as they search for meaning in life. Mission houses in Africa, Central America, and South America shelter abandoned and orphaned street children, inviting them, too, on a journey of rebirth in love. Each house is imbued with God's mercy and forgiveness. There, young people live in a simple Christian family environment, transformed by the healing powers of prayer, work, friendship, sacrifice, and love.

For decades now and on a daily basis, Mother Elvira's humble spirituality has awakened hope and joy in the souls of the troubled and the lost, giving each of them new life. Open the pages of this wise, uplifting book. That same hope and joy can be yours.

Rita Agnese Petrozzi, known as Mother Elvira and identified by many as the nun of the drug addicts, was born in Sora, Lazio on January 21, 1937. She loves to call herself the daughter of poor people. During World War II, she immigrated to Alessandria with her poor family, where they lived the hardships and the misery of the time after the war. She became the servant of everyone at home. At the age of 19, she entered the convent, in Borgaro Torinese, of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Jeanne Antide Thouret, where she went from Rita Agnese to Sister Elvira.

Around the mid-seventies, an internal fire ignited in her to devote herself to the young people she saw who were lost, wandering and searching. Comunità Cenacolo was founded on July 16, 1983, after a long period of waiting with trust and patience. The Community is not only a site of social work and welfare work, but above all it is a family founded on faith. It's a place where those who are wounded can meet a love that welcomes them freely, helps heal their wounds, sustains them and guides them to find the Way of Truth. It's a demanding love that educates them about the beauty of true life.