The text intended for the scene bears the signature of Franco Molè, a believer but critical of ecclesial institutions, yet impressed by the figure of the French mystic who will be canonized on Sunday 15 May. The story, on the pages of L’Osservatore Romano
by Francisco Javier Froján Madero
A few days ago the original libretto of a play, Charles del Divino Amore, now almost forgotten, about the French mystic Charles de Foucauld (Strasbourg 1858 – Tamanrasset 1916) fell by chance into my hands. Struck by the fact that I came across this beautiful text by chance a few days before the canonization of the French saint, which will take place on Sunday 15 May, I was prompted to write these lines on the aforementioned work, whose action takes place in two acts in France. , Morocco and Algeria between the 19th and 20th centuries.
With an initial and unique footnote, the actor, playwright and director Franco Molè (Terni, 1939-2006), frames the plot of his play by briefly but intensely describing the life of Charles de Foucauld. The author sums it up as follows: «From an aristocratic family he studied with the Jesuits. He attends the St. Cyr Military Academy with mediocre results, militarily speaking. He is an officer of the Hussars in Algeria but is discharged for indiscipline. Readmitted he participates in the expedition against the Ouledi rebels after which he leaves the army definitively and takes a trip to Morocco, the results of which he elaborated in the volume Recognition in Morocco of considerable scientific interest. In full mystical crisis he goes first to the Holy Land among the Trappists, then to Palestine to the convent of the Poor Clares where he carried out humble services, finally, having clarified his hermit vocation, he returns to Africa where he puts into practice the rules of his own religious congregation opposed by all. He lives in the Algerian desert and studies the language, habits and customs of the Touareg. Having become very popular among the local populations, he fights fiercely for their political and civil rights but is assassinated on 1 December 1916 ».
Franco Molè, a believer but critical of ecclesial institutions, born into a family well rooted in Christian principles – like that of Foucauld – had received a book on the life of Charles, given to him by his elder brother Nicola. After his reading, he was impressed by the life of this French, hitherto unknown to him. After a short time of reflection he writes the aforementioned short summary, starting from which he will develop the drama.
In the first part of the play already emerges one of the characteristics that have marked the life of the mystic, who has come to live his life with the freedom proper to the children of God. A freedom assumed, never imposed, which leads to a lifestyle, which included in the pursuit of the just right, he can never get along with violence. Authority serves to curb violence. The struggle for human rights makes itself felt already from the first dialogues that are established between the first actors, who are amazed at the choice of Charles de Foucauld, a man who loves pleasures and a licentious life, to go and live in a country hostile to non-Muslims. Precisely this misconduct and indiscipline had been the cause for which he was expelled from the army. They were the dark years of his life, in which not even the existence of God is considered. Charles returns to France. But, having learned of the Ouledi revolt, he wants to redeem his life, his name and the lost years. He joins the iv Hunters of Africa, but the vision of the slaughtered bodies of Muslims pushes him to leave the army for good. Back in his hometown, he asks a priest (Father Huvelin) to instruct him and finds God in October 1886, at the age of 28. He wants to return to Algeria but ends up embarking on a dangerous exploration of forbidden Morocco. Years were spent scientifically in deepening the geographical knowledge of Morocco and which, above all, decisively influenced his decision to stay there, among their people, and become one of them, to understand them, to defend them, to love them. To this end “you must not tell him that you are one of them, you simply must not tell him that you are not”. The visit, in principle temporary, will end in a faithful and perpetual falling in love with the touareg, those majestic blue warriors that the French wanted to be submissive.
In the second part of the work, Molè completely changes the scene. The deuteronomic precept “you shall love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind” (Dt 6: 4) solemnly inaugurates an introspection of the spirituality of Foucauld’s life, perhaps also of the life of author, for whom his religious vocation is born in the same instant of his renewed faith. Charles leaves everything, his family titles, his social and working position and material possessions, or as they say metaphorically in religious language, “he abandons the world”, to devote himself totally to the newly found God, being the last of the last. In no congregation of the Holy Mother Church, nor in the contemplative silence of the Poor Clares, not even in the rigid trappe, where she lives for seven years, first in Our Lady of the Snows, then in Akbés in Syria, can she meet the desired life of poverty, of abjection and effective detachment. He feels the greatest repugnance for anything that could take him away from the last place, of being the last of the last.
Ordained a priest in 1901, at the age of 43, he went to the Algerian desert of the Sahara, first to Béni Abbès, then, in 1904, he settled permanently in Tamanrasset, with the touaregs of Mount Hoggar, poor among the poor. The decision worried the French general “Leperrine”, who was not totally calm about his personal safety. However, this drastic and exemplary decision of Foucauld, his religious life, among the bastions of a fort, is humiliated, hindered and questioned by everyone, even by his own natives. Contrary to what is usual in the Arab world, the touareg covered the face, while women, like the young and beautiful “Dassine”, offered to them by the supreme head of the Hoggar, Amenokal, but evidently rejected by Charles, wore it uncovered. But far from giving up on his commitment to holiness, and also driven by the faith of Muslims, Foucauld continues to question himself about the existence of God – “My God, if you exist, let me know you” – and he abandons himself totally in God Christian of forgiveness by persistently repeating his prayer: «Father, I abandon myself to you, do with me what you will like, whatever you do with me, I thank you. I am ready for anything, I accept everything, as long as your will is done in me, in all your creatures. I do not desire anything else, my God, I put my soul in your hands, I give it to you my God, with all the love of my heart ». And so, in the oasis of the desert, he embarks on a life in which he sustains himself “only with the work of his hands”, without accepting any gifts or alms, and, like a torn pilgrim, he deprives himself “of all that can be deprived”, in silence perpetual, becoming permanently from viscount to brother Charles of Jesus.
The religious thus found his vocation which was to “go down”, to convert himself into a walkway on which the feet of others can tread their nails to humiliate him even more, to annihilate him and make him feel that he is the last of the children. of God. “Our annihilation is the most powerful means we have to unite with Jesus and to do good to souls”, he would write shortly before dying. For him, the word foreign does not exist and weapons can become an instrument of peace with the power of love. In continuous prayer and adoration, meditating on Holy Scripture, he becomes a “Christian marabout”, that is, a religious leader and teacher among the Touareg, in the Assekrem. In the prayerful silence and continuous praise to the creator, but also in the proximity and promotion of the Touareg, he learns their language, coming to translate proverbs and poems. He spent thirteen years in the Hoggar, from that distant 1904, when with Paul Embarek, the slave freed years earlier, he had left the hermitage of Béni Abbès. A hermitage always open to all, whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, indifferent or idolaters. On the evening of December 1, 1916, Charles, the little brother of Jesus, believing he was receiving a courier, found a group of numerous Sinoussite guerrillas in front of the door who tied him up and mistreated him. It will be a young friend of Paul, Sermi Ag Tohra, who will hit him with a bullet. Charles folding in on himself, slowly, delivered his soul to God among the naked red rocks. War, hatred and violence ended the life of that man of God who had been peace and gift.
Finally, Molè wanted to express and transmit in the work described the figure and the message of this sui generis man, of this seeker of God, of this hermit priest, monk without a monastery, little among the little ones, who tried to smile, to love everyone and build peace. With his drama he reminds us that Charles de Foucauld’s relationship with the Islamic world continues to represent for us a challenge towards universal brotherhood.
Charles del Divino Amore, written in 1967, was awarded the IDI St. Vincent Award in 1972 for the best comedy of the year. Surely Molè counted on the advice of his great friend, his father Valentino Davanzati, a Jesuit expert in the world of cinema and theater, who has always followed him in his artistic work. The opera was staged for the first time in Bologna in 1971 at the Teatro La Ribalta under the direction of the author. On that occasion the interpreters were Franco Molè himself, Barbara Simon, Giselda Castrini, Angelo Guidi, Livio Galassi, Luciano Mariti, Vittoria Marra, Mauro Bosco, Rinaldo Porta and Guido Sagliocca. The work was published in 1969 by Samonà and Savelli Editrice, Rome.
The Terni actor and director is considered one of the exponents of the new theater belonging to the Roman school. He was director of the Samonà e Savelli theatrical series, assistant to Luciano Codignola and Mario Missiroli at the University of Urbino, editor of the magazine Teatro and founder of the theater and of the company “Alla Railhiera”. In 1976 he married Martine Brochard, a French actress, with whom he worked intensively until his death.
In 2008 the Franco Molè Association was born, with its registered office in Terni, which, among its many activities, has granted, since 2011, an award to support the new generations of Italian actors and registers. A street was dedicated to Franco Molè in the hometown of Terni, inaugurated in 2021.