Saint of the Day for 11 February: Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes
From the Festival of Mission website, the story of Andrea, who in illness found the answer to the many questions of love in the world
(Editor “Festival of Mission”)
If it is true that the encounter with the other helps us understand something about ourselves, this is even more true for Andrea Caschetto, a 34-year-old young man with a special title: “Smile Ambassador.”
And with this symbolic sash he has been traveling the world for years. He has just been to Namibia, bringing to 108 the number of countries visited. “I’m doing a different trip than usual because I’ve been doing humanitarian trips my whole life by making children do activities with music, theater, sports in orphanages and hospitals,” Caschetto says.
“For this trip instead, I left with materials to make magic games.” He has simple games with him, but his little spectators are always amazed and want to understand how he does it.
“I tell them that to do these magic games you have to study-I want to convey to them the importance of study,” Caschetto explains with a smile. He who has managed to bring smiles all over the world.
As a child, he dreamed of becoming a magistrate, but a brain tumor, diagnosed when he was 15, changed for his plans. After the operation, he began to suffer from severe memory deficits, making school difficult.
At age 19, he decided to leave for South Africa for a volunteer experience. Upon returning to Italy, surprisingly, she remembers all the faces of the children she had played with and all the experiences she had. But in everyday life, problems remain. Through various research, Caschetto discovers the “power of emotions.”
Emotionally significant experiences are recorded as important events and stored in long-term memory.
From this discovery, his mission was born: to bring authentic emotions to others and, at the same time, to himself. Since then, Caschetto has been traveling the world visiting hospitals, orphanages and nursing homes. There he plays and gives smiles to children and, as he affectionately calls older people, to “children with wrinkles.”
“I’ve been to war places, to poor places, to very difficult settings, but always thanks to children, I’ve been able to find happiness in any situation,” Caschetto says. Among the many faces he has met, one in particular has marked him deeply: Elisa, a little girl with leukemia. “We did everything to find her a compatible bone marrow donor. More than 50,000 people registered with the Bone Marrow Donor Association. Eventually an 80 percent compatible donor was found, but unfortunately the transplant had complications. After the second attempt, Elisa did not make it.”