The story of Fiorella, a Sophia student, who opened the latest edition of the May Day event in Loppiano.
Her name at birth was Alexandra Fiorella, but everyone at home has always called her just Fiorella. She carries with her the pride of being born and raised in Arequipa, the “white city” in southern Peru, which lies at the foot of three volcanoes. She is 29 years old and is completing her degree in the Culture of Unity at Sophia, specialising in ‘Economics, Sustainability and Communion’. She arrived in Loppiano in August 2023, thanks to a programme run by the university where she works, the Catholic University of San Pablo, which trains teachers and also supports their education financially.
‘Before I arrived, I was full of fears. I was slowly losing myself in the daily routine, my light was fading,’ she says almost in a whisper, her dark eyes slightly half-closed, as if to focus better on her memories. ‘Being chosen by the university to become a teacher was the first thing I ever felt was truly for me,’ she explains. “I always made choices to please my family: I studied Business Administration even though I would have preferred to study architecture, because I love art very much. Then, luckily, I discovered advertising and marketing, in their creative aspect, which I am very passionate about. However, inside me, the conflict continued: I wondered if that was my true calling.
Then there was her traditional way of living her faith, ’like a list of things to do, without freedom and a community with which to share the journey.”
With this inner struggle, Fiorella lived, or rather, survived, at least until, by ‘coincidence,’ she heard someone talking about the Economy of Communion. “I asked myself: Is there really a reality where love is at the centre of the economy? A few days later, a teacher told me about Sophia, here in Loppiano. Even today, I don’t really know why, but when I heard the principles of the Economy of Communion, that little light that was still burning inside me was reawakened.”
So, despite her doubts and resistance, she decided to follow what seemed to be “her” light. ’I got in touch with Sophia and, almost without realising it, two months after my interview, I was already on my way to Italy!”
A new country, an unfamiliar language, family and friends far away. She recounted the end of the story, which is more like a beginning, from the stage of the May Day celebrations in Loppiano in 2025: “I will never be able to express in words everything I have experienced in Loppiano, because it is indescribable, but I will try in a somewhat poetic way. On 30 August 2023, after three flights, four trains, missing one and almost sleeping in a station, I arrived in Incisa. The real journey began there. When I climbed the stairs of the station, I was greeted by sunshine that lit up my day and gave me one of the strongest hugs of my life, capable of putting together many broken pieces inside me. When I arrived at my new home, a hot meal was waiting for me. I still remember its taste. After a journey to the other side of the world, every gesture was a caress. As the days passed, I got to know the nature and people of Loppiano: each one different, fascinating, unique. But there was something that united them all… In their eyes there was peace, in their voices the experience of a life given for love, and in their smiles there was hope. Loppiano showed me beautiful landscapes, but above all its creatures confided in me their crosses and sorrows, carried with heroism and hope, the hope that one day the “wars” will end, and peace will come.
I met beautiful souls who, like a starry sky, illuminated my moments of darkness, and it seemed to me that through them I could feel God’s embrace, still saying to me: “Take courage, get up!”. Little by little, I don’t know how to explain it… Loppiano entered into me, healed my wounds, illuminated my days and brought me closer to my vocation. And so a small Peruvian flower made its way through the stones and was reborn thanks to the earth where it had dropped its seeds. That is why I am called Fiorella’.
*Fiorella means little flower in Italian.