Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Napoli (Agenzia Fides) - Sunday 28 June at 5pm at the S. Egidio Community in Naples (via S.Nicola al Nilo 4), there will be a ceremony to award diplomas to 250 immigrant students of the Louis Massignon Italian School run by the S. Egidio Community. The ceremony will be followed by a multiethnic party to end the school year. This year the school registered 400 students for 10 different classes according to previous knowledge of Italian. The students are domestic helpers, baby-sitters, waiters, workers, builders. Classes are held Monday evenings, Thursday afternoons and Sunday mornings with a flexible programme to fit in with the working hours of the students.
Louis Massignon School has been present in Naples since the Autumn of 1989, following the death of Jerry Essan Maslo, a young South African immigrant, robbed and killed in the Summer 1989 at Villa Literno. The school is the fruit of reflection on the part of the S. Egidio Community on the presence of immigrants in the Italian region of Campania after that tragic event. Jerry was a regular student at the Massignon School in Rome, and during the Summer he used to go to Caserta near Naples to pick tomatoes.
Since 1989 Massignon School in Naples has registered about 5.000 foreign students from many different countries: initially most were Africans and then when immigration laws clamped down on that continent, students came from East European countries and then Latin America and then Sri Lanka. The school serves as an observatory on the flow and presence of foreigners in the Campania region of Italy. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 26/6/2009)
