Newborn baby abandoned in a church in Bari, the parish priest: “It's my Christmas gift”

The little newborn who was left very early this morning, wrapped in a blanket, will be called Maria Grazia. in the thermal cradle of the parish of San Giovanni Battista in Barthe. A protected space created specifically to entrust to the care of the Church children whose parents cannot keep them. Spaces that have always existed, even if they have changed over time: once they were the so-called “exhibition wheels”, while today they are thermal cradles which, when used to entrust a child to others (the term “abandonment” is ill-suited to those who choose, for whatever reason, to guarantee their child a better fate, even if cared for by others), they sound an alarm.

This happened this morning, around 7.20, when the parish priest's cell phone rang. Don Antonio Ruccia he must have thought it was a greeting message, or an unusual notification, but instead it was the notice that a little girl had arrived in his church. Born a few days ago, little Maria Grazia is in good health and is currently hospitalized in the Neonatology department of the Polyclinic of Bari. “That little one, a few days before the Christmas of our Lord, gave me a gift: it's as if I had come into the world again”, said the parish priest.

No note left with the little girl, who – says the priest «She was crying like a maniac, and was wearing a green onesie, a pink vest and a hat.” Since he had activated the thermal cradle in his parish, in 2014, Don Antonio Ruccia had welcomed into his arms another newborn, in 2020, Luigi. “This time, compared to three years ago, it was worse in terms of agitation and joy,” he says. «Then next to him there was a note on which his name and other information about his health were written. This time nothing.”

«For two days I found the cradle open. It can mean everything or nothing but I imagine the courage and pain of those who left the little girl» said the priest.