VERNIO, Italy \u2014 The priest stepped into the bedroom where his 90-year-old parishioner lay sleeping in a hospital bed, flanked by oxygen tanks. The pastor towered over the bed and leaned down to move close to the patient, Carlo Martini, as the old man\u2019s eyes fluttered open briefly. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow are you?\u201d the priest, the Rev. Vincent Souly, asked, a bit too loudly.<\/p>\n
Martini\u2019s wife, Renza Giagnoni, stood to the side and watched. \u201cIt looks like we\u2019re the United Nations!\u201d she said, also a bit too loudly.<\/p>\n
Souly is one of the few Black faces in the province of Prato, a mountainous region of Tuscany, in central Italy, where he has served for 15 years as a Roman Catholic priest. He has built warm relationships with his predominantly Italian flocks and is embraced by many parishioners. Born in Burkina Faso, and raised and ordained in the Ivory Coast, he is now an Italian citizen and is committed to staying in Prato as long as he is needed. Yet, he said, his Italian passport does not necessarily make others see him as Italian. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I\u2019m from, we say, \u2018A piece of wood, no matter how long it stays in water, will never become a crocodile,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re accepted, up to a point. But there\u2019s this unspoken part, right? You remain what you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He felt a flash of that otherness when Giagnoni referred to the United Nations, he told us later, or when parishioners referred to him as a \u201cprete di colore\u201d or \u201cpriest of color.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would prefer that people refer to him by his country of origin rather than by the color of his skin, he said. \u201cWhen you say, \u2018He is an African priest,\u2019 it\u2019s already more elegant, it\u2019s more cultured,\u201d he said. \u201cThat means that you\u2019ve tried to locate where Africa is on the world map. If you say, \u2018He is from the Ivory Coast,\u2019 that\u2019s even better. Using the color is a shortcut.\u201d <\/p>\n
As fewer Italians take the vows of priesthood, Souly is among about 1,130 African priests who oversee Italian churches \u2014 approximately 4% of Italy\u2019s clergy, not including more junior church positions.<\/p>\n
Souly is part of a historic wave of immigration that is changing Europe. Roughly 1 in 7 people in the European Union was born outside their country of residence, the highest rate since the bloc started compiling such statistics nearly two decades ago. Italy, with 12% born overseas, has one of the largest immigrant populations on the continent \u2014 a remarkable reversal for a nation that once helped to fuel mass emigration to America. <\/p>\n
The priest\u2019s life highlights a nuance of that changing Italy. In the common consciousness, immigrants are typically filling labor shortages in the country\u2019s many depopulated and aging communities \u2014 mainly across the agricultural, manufacturing and service sectors, and often on the peripheries of Italian life. <\/p>\n
Yet Souly is helping to shore up an institution at the heart of Italian history and national identity \u2014 the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike foreigners working on the sidelines of Italian society, Souly stands front and center in his community. He is there out of spiritual mission rather than economic desperation. And his work helps sustain his parishioners\u2019 religious lives, even if some of them feel ambivalent about the implications of his presence. <\/p>\n
Weekends find Souly \u2014 a tall, gentle man with a quiet smile \u2014 careering around mountain roads in a 19-year-old silver Fiat hatchback as he races between churches and Masses.<\/p>\n
On the weekend we visited, he conducted services in two villages on a Saturday afternoon before holding a happy hour at his rectory, hosting several couples for prosecco and beer, and potato chips piled on paper plates. In the evening, he attended a pizza dinner at a social club run by one of his parishes. The following morning, he led Mass at three churches before noon, delivering three distinct homilies that he said he had improvised on the spot, before spending the afternoon visiting families across his district. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiving reason to our hope will be a fight every day,\u201d he said in one homily. \u201cIt will be strained by many things every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout the weekend, his parishioners spoke of him with clear warmth.<\/p>\n
Gabriela Tabusso Morini recalled first meeting Souly as he hoed the garden outside a church near her home. Days later, he saw Morini and her husband at Mass and welcomed them by name. \u201cThis struck us so much, that he remembered us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t just any old faces, we were people.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yet for all of his popularity, Souly still feels a sense of loneliness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all isolated, each in his own world,\u201d he said, standing in the rectory kitchen after finishing the Sunday Masses. He stirred simmering pots of carp and chicken stews \u2014 both recipes that his mother had taught him how to cook. Slicing cucumbers, avocado and red onion for a salad, he said that he shopped for special ingredients like cow hooves and a West African variant of eggplant at shops run by immigrants from China or Pakistan. <\/p>\n
Occasionally, people ask him when he intends to return to the Ivory Coast. Some ask because they hope he will never leave, he said. Others \u201cask when you\u2019ll go home because they are looking for confirmation that you are, indeed, going home one day.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018He Had to Work a Bit\u2019 <\/p>\n
Souly is the third of six children of a cook and a homemaker in western Ivory Coast. As a child, he said, he never imagined that he would travel so far from home. He entered seminary when he was 18 and was ordained at 32. In 2007, when he was 35, he received a Vatican scholarship to pursue a master\u2019s degree in canon law in Rome. <\/p>\n
He landed in Italy speaking only French and Moor\u00e9, an official language of Burkina Faso, and got lost on the way from the airport to his dormitory. For the first three months after he arrived in Rome, he took intensive grammar classes for seven hours a day, he added, and once he started his academic degree, he continued classes with nuns and priests from across Africa, Eastern Europe and a few from China. <\/p>\n
Although his scholarship covered tuition, he struggled to pay for room and board. He took a job as an assistant pastor in northern Italy, eventually transferring to a similar post at one of the four parishes where he is now the main priest. After receiving his doctorate in 2014, he decided against returning to the Ivory Coast. <\/p>\n
Local residents, who had gone without a priest for some years, helped to furnish the rectory where he lived and bought him a bed to accommodate his lanky frame.<\/p>\n
Parishioners have varied recollections of how they felt about him when he first arrived.<\/p>\n
According to Maria Lucarini, 41, the mayor of Vernio, the village that hosts Souly\u2019s largest parish, \u201cHe had to work a bit because, after all, this is a mountain community, not used to seeing \u2014 maybe at the beginning when he arrived \u2014 many people of color.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people got to know the person and saw how much he commits himself to the community, maybe that initial barrier of his different skin color collapsed,\u201d Lucarini added.<\/p>\n
Ilaria Tonini, 46, said that an Italian priest, born and raised in the area, \u201cwould certainly be better,\u201d as the community had previously been accustomed to a locally born pastor who had served for over 30 years. But she praised Souly because he \u201creally fit right in.\u201d <\/p>\n
Others had less complicated memories. Souly\u2019s heritage \u201cdidn\u2019t make any difference,\u201d said Osanna Becherini, 79, after a recent Saturday afternoon Mass. \u201cReligion is religion. Rightly so, white, Black or yellow,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat\u2019s important is that he is present. He baptized all my grandchildren.\u201d <\/p>\n
Because of the changing demographics, a handful of Souly\u2019s congregants are also from Africa. Lena Ehika, 37, moved from Nigeria five years ago to join her husband, a factory worker in the region. She said it \u201cdoesn\u2019t make any difference to me\u201d that she and Souly came from the same continent. <\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the Masses I\u2019ve attended here are celebrated by Black priests,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n
Some parishioners are so accommodating that it can be hard for foreign priests to return to their home countries at the end of a posting, said the Rev. Cyril Arnaud Meba, 35, a Cameroonian who assists Souly during Masses.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere we can find people who welcome us, generous people, people who give us so many things. And then we get used to receiving this, and then we don\u2019t want to return anymore because it feels good to live here,\u201d said Meba, who said he was nevertheless determined to return to Cameroon. \u201cWe all have a good life.\u201d <\/p>\n
Still, Souly said that some Italians looked down on him because he came from a poorer part of the world. They did not realize, he said, that they were often spiritually impoverished \u2014 having lost touch with their extended families and having forgone human companionship for digital media. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is material poverty, and there is spiritual, intellectual and cultural poverty,\u201d Souly said. \u201cBut explaining that in a place like this is difficult. The fact of having electricity, these roads, the development, the modernity \u2014 they think that is enough to say, \u2018I am better than you.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018He Has to Rush Away\u2019 <\/p>\n
Souly\u2019s biggest challenge is spending enough time in his various parishes.<\/p>\n
At every Mass, rows of empty pews outnumber filled benches. Yet the remaining churchgoers still struggle to get his attention before he races off to the next village. His focus is divided even further by his duties as the head canonical legal officer for the diocese. <\/p>\n
\u201cBefore, apparently, the priest who actually lived right in the town knew everyone,\u201d said Pietro D\u2019Amore, 42, who owns a second home near one of Souly\u2019s churches. D\u2019Amore\u2019s eldest son serves as an altar boy, but he lamented that he saw the priest only during Mass \u201cand then he has to rush away.\u201d <\/p>\n
Souly does his best. He has tried to visit every member of every church at their home, he said.<\/p>\n
At the pizza dinner hosted by the parish social club recently, he sat at the center of a long table surrounded by those who had attended Mass an hour earlier. Lucarini, the mayor, sat across from him with her husband and young daughter, who had brought a sketchbook. Souly tried to show an interest in what the girl was doing, but she barely seemed to pay attention to him before producing a drawing of a smiling brown man wearing glasses and a priest\u2019s collar. <\/p>\n
The next day, Souly shuttled from house to house throughout the afternoon. He visited a sexton and his wife to check on preparations for a first confession ceremony. As he left Martini\u2019s sickbed, Giagnoni tried, multiple times, to persuade him to take a zuccherino, a traditional sugar cookie, until he finally explained that he was prediabetic and should not eat sweets. <\/p>\n
Souly dropped by the home of Sara Orlandi, 46, a legal secretary, and her husband, Alessandro Ballotti, 57, who manages a mechanics\u2019 shop.<\/p>\n
They warmly greeted Souly and invited him to stay for dinner. When he politely turned them down, telling them that he planned to visit a cancer patient in another village, Orlandi gently ribbed him.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive me a break,\u201d Orlandi joked. \u201cWho are you, the pope?\u201d Ballotti asked Souly to come back the following week to watch a soccer match, but the priest said he would not have time.<\/p>\n
Souly, perched on a couch, told them that he hoped the bishop would soon send an Italian-born priest to help him serve the parishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep coming to us once in a while, please, even if there\u2019s a change,\u201d Orlandi said.<\/p>\n
Later, Souly said that he believed it would help to work with a native Italian partner. People would always think of him as foreign, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s remained in people\u2019s minds,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to remove it.\u201d<\/p>\n