The mayor of Riace, a village of less than 2,000 inhabitants in Calabria, in the tip of Italy’s boot, has a minister’s agenda. Elected European deputy in June 2024, in Strasbourg three days a month, Domenico Lucano holds meetings between two votes. At 10:30 a.m., an interview for Spanish television: “The Riace model against the Meloni model”; at 11 a.m., an interview with a Danish journalist.
While his colleagues list the contents of a tight schedule, the MP gets a little annoyed, immediately speaking informally, in Italian style: “What do you want to know?” » His eyes light up when he is told that it is a Christian newspaper that is asking for him. 25 years ago, he, the atheist leftist, met a man driven by the Gospel, which turned his life upside down.
The 1isJuly 1998, 184 Iranian, Syrian and Turkish Kurds, including 72 children, who left Turkey on a sailboat, washed up at Riace Marina, the beach below a village. Domenico Lucano, known as “Mimmo”, a local guy, came as a curious person. “A very first landing had already taken place at Badolato, 30 km away, six months earlier, he remembers. The municipality had taken charge of 400 men, housing them in tents, then in empty houses, made available by the inhabitants. What I had read about it in the newspapers impressed me. I wanted to understand. »
When Mimmo arrives on the shore of Riace, Giancarlo Maria Bregantini, the bishop of the diocese of Locri-Gerace, is already there.
“Men, women with children in their arms… A biblical exodus
