In Benevento, loneliness is being treated as a community question, not only an assistance case. A local network brings together the Unità Pastorale San Filippo Neri, Caritas Diocesana di Benevento and Parrocchia Santa Maria di Costantinopoli around one idea: young people serving as an active resource for older residents, within a wider web of parish and Caritas relationships.
The initiative is organized through three complementary paths: "Intrecci di vite", "Custodi della bellezza sacra" and "Sentinelle del Bene".
What the three paths do
"Intrecci di vite" is the social side of the project. It offers laboratories, reading sessions and shared activities at the Unità Pastorale San Filippo Neri, intended to encourage socialisation and new relationships.
"Custodi della bellezza sacra" looks to Benevento's historic centre. It focuses on welcoming visitors and rediscovering churches as places of culture and encounter, rather than only as places of worship.
"Sentinelle del Bene" is the listening and proximity-support strand. It operates through the Caritas office in via San Pasquale, the parish, the pastoral unit and home visits, providing listening, orientation and practical proximity support.
Caritas Service Civil operators are described as "sentinelle di prossimità" within this structure. According to the reporting, they can provide free telephone companionship, small errands and support with transport for older residents.
The network also connects with the parish group "Anni Preziosi" and with the "AlleniAmo la memoria" activities led by Sister Rosa Lorusso.
How the three strands fit together
Read together, the three paths cover different needs that often appear together in later life.
The first is regular company: laboratories and reading sessions create repeated occasions to meet the same people. The second is a reason to go out: churches in the historic centre become accessible cultural destinations and meeting points. The third is a safety net for quieter days: listening, orientation, telephone companionship, small errands and transport support, including home visits where needed.
That combination matters because loneliness is rarely solved by a single service. A programme that joins social activities, cultural places and home-based proximity support can reach people with different levels of mobility, confidence and need, while young people and Caritas Service Civil operators act as active resources within the proximity network.
A wider pattern in the Benevento area
The Benevento initiative fits a wider local pattern of community-based responses to loneliness, social vulnerability and the need for proximity services.
In Frasso Telesino, a separate project has used cooperation among voluntary associations and socialisation activities as a response to loneliness, marginalisation and hardship, with attention to younger generations. In Benevento itself, the EmpowerNet project is described as strengthening community networks and proximity services within a broader strategy of inclusion, social innovation and participation.
That wider social-innovation strategy includes co-designed projects involving third-sector organisations, associations, businesses and training bodies. In other words, the church- and Caritas-led network in Benevento is one local expression of a broader move toward co-designed, neighbourhood-level support.
What is not yet public in the reporting
The material reviewed does not specify the programme's launch date, duration or funding source. It does not report participation numbers, outcomes or an independent evaluation.
It also does not publish direct contact details, referral procedures or eligibility criteria for "Sentinelle del Bene". Readers should therefore treat the descriptions above — telephone companionship, errands such as shopping, pharmacy collections and postal services, parish and Caritas locations, and home visits — as the scope reported so far, with practical access arrangements still to be clarified in future reporting.
