The triptych explores sacrifice and faith through symbols of suffering and hope.
The first panel presents a shadowed female figure—a sign of women’s invisibility within the Church—while the golden crosses evoke the tension between exclusion and sanctity. At the centre, golden barbed wire threads through empty garments, echoing Christ’s crown of thorns and the silent, devoted path of many women in the history of faith.
The third panel conveys an intense testimony, weaving personal experience with ecclesial reflection: a life lived within the Church—through service, study, and spiritual quest—yet always marked by a sense of belonging that was never fully recognised. Faith as a space of welcome and truth clashes with a structure that struggles to open, clinging to the weight of the past and resisting the courage of renewal.
Yet in the Gospel, woman is disciple, witness—not confined to a role, but called for who she truly is. Black speaks of absence; gold, of hope—in a dialogue between memory, sacrifice, and the longing for transformation
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I am a practicing Catholic and have always tried to dedicate time and passion to my faith. For many years, I served as a catechist, and for a while, I was involved in a group that aimed to make the Sunday liturgy more lively and participatory. I have held official ecclesiastical roles, I have always read a lot and listened carefully, and I have always asked myself many questions. I believe that one must never stop seeking. Seeking to know, to understand, and to dream. The dimension of the transcendent, the beyond, the divine is indispensable to me, and it is equally indispensable to think of this dimension not only in masculine terms. In the Catholic Church, it is still difficult to feel fully welcomed and valued as women; there is always the sense of living a second-class baptism. The Church, as an institution, has a heavy structure that carries 2,000 years of power; it is still not able to see itself as weak, free, or new, as the weakness, freedom, and novelty of the Gospel could make it. Every time there is an opening, a project for change, such as the Second Vatican Council or the synodal journey that has been underway for a few years, hopes are born, and glimpses of light appear, but they are fleeting, and then the lack of courage and fear of change prevail. When a woman reads the Gospel, she feels completely understood, esteemed, and respected by Jesus. Not as a wife, mother, or consecrated person, but as a disciple, as His witness. This is why the strongest feeling, now that I am on the threshold of retirement, is the sorrow for the opportunities lost by the Church to show civil society how each person can be valued for their talents, abilities, gifts, and simply for being part of humanity, and not for their sexual identity.