The day the women left the Church: forever

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

And so the day arrived. There was a murmur in the air, accompanied by friendly laughter. A silent yet cheerful rush to leave. They had secretly agreed, just like in the old school days. But now they were grown, and precisely because of this, they decided that day to go elsewhere. In fact, they had resolved to leave the church forever: never to return. The latest events had finally convinced them that there was no place for them. Perhaps those repeated rejections were part of a voice from the Mystery, guiding history and the universe to move in another direction. The universe is vast, so why insist on remaining in a place that, day by day, reveals itself to be hostile?

This was the thought of the friends who, filled with joy, decided that day to walk through every street in the village, calling out to every woman they met and sharing the great news: the Mystery is calling us all to go elsewhere. Centuries upon centuries receiving nothing but rejection, misunderstanding, orders to remain silent. And don’t you remember when they amused themselves by burning us, by calling us witches! So why should we stay in a place like this, that doesn’t want us, that treats us badly? Let’s all leave, they shouted, and dancing and singing merrily, they went from door to door. “Let’s go, girls! We’re free! Let’s never again be trapped by their petty words.”

So it was that from that day onwards, the churches were left without a single woman: they had all gone. And on that day, it was written in the skies and etched into the whispers of the wind: “New times will come,” proclaimed the silence of the empty naves, “for the women, daughters of the earth and of courage, have listened to the secret heartbeat of the Mystery.” Thus, like waves abandoning the shore after centuries of storms, they left the places that had not loved them, carrying with them the ancient light of freedom. And the bells, which once called people to gather, remained silent, contemplating the peaceful revolution of souls on the move.

It was the end of one era and the dawn of another, where the voices of women, finally freed from the shackles of invisibility, echoed through the alleys, the squares, beneath the limitless sky: “There will be no more prison that can hold us, nor word that can silence us. From today, life will be written elsewhere.” And even now, those who listen with an open heart can hear them, dancing lightly on the border between the old and new world, proclaiming that where freedom calls, no heart shall remain in chains.