Don Zeno, the priest of Nomadelfia, a dream come true against everything and everyone, and at the same time in favor of everything and everyone. Admired even by those who hated him. It's difficult to be neutral when faced with someone like him. Unimaginable for many, but real today, the beatification process is underway...
by Gianni Gennari
Few like him before, perhaps no one so outside the box. So here it is.
Zeno Saltini was born on 30 August 1900 in Fossoli, near Carpi, the ninth of 12 children of a wealthy farmer couple. At 14 he leaves school: as it is he finds it useless to life, and goes to work in the fields. At 20 he is a soldier in Florence, and listening to a companion say that Jesus Christ and the Church are the real obstacle to human progress he realizes that he has to study to be able to show with his life and word that Christ instead is freedom and justice.
He studied on his own, graduated in law at the Catholic University of Milan and in the meantime began to deal with young misfits: for them he acted as a free lawyer in the Court, but realizing that he had to help them first, he decided to become a priest and did everything in a couple of seconds. 'years.
On 6 January 1931 he said his first Mass in Carpi, and wanted Danilo, 17 years old, just released from prison, next to him on the altar. He is the assistant parish priest in Roncole, near Modena, and occupies an abandoned building in front of the church, filling it with what he calls "sons", abandoned and lonely boys. He presents himself to the bishop with two children in his arms. The one crying gives him his permission... he will be their father, but he is looking for a mother. Thus arrives Irene, a girl willing to do it, who overcomes great difficulties even in her family, because she is still a minor, but she and him prevail.
Thus they begin, he, Irene and many of their children, and without anyone... Suspicions and rumours, but the thing attracts and in the time of the war, the 40s, other mothers and other priests arrive, seven all together from Carpi and Modena. He wants everyone to call themselves “little apostles”. Suspected for years by the fascists in power, after 8 September both the fascists and the Germans looked for him as a subversive and rebel, and he had to flee to the South, while many of his children and his fellow priests ended up deported to concentration camps. in Germany or even hanged and shot on the spot.
Once the war is over he resumes his activity and sets his sights on the former concentration camp of Fossoli, his town, he breaks down the barbed wires, restores the barracks, and not only the mothers arrive for their children from before and after, but also married couples with their children who accept others as if they were their own, in total equality even with no one's children, because only one is the Father of all, up there, and does not allow disparities...
On 14 February 1948, a basic law for everyone was approved by signing it on the altar of the Mass and the new name arrived, Nomadelfia, that is, a place where brotherhood (adelfìa) is law (nòmos). In a short time, 1200 people gathered around this fiery priest, including 800 children, 150 men and women without homes or jobs, and 250 of his people, men and women, priests and lay people who don't stop for a moment... He comes out to also surprising is a reality of practical action, the Human Fraternity Movement, which openly proposes the end of all exploitation and creates total and direct democracy within. Open heaven! Alarm among the politicians of the DC of the time and many corridors of the Curias across half of Italy are also worried...
Smell of communism! Credits are blocked, and the economic situation for Don Zeno and his family becomes difficult. Many ask the Church to remedy the situation by stopping this strange priest who squanders money and inspires forbidden dreams: all equal, all children of the family, all with the right to everything they need to live well... But are we crazy? On 5 February 1942, Don Zeno received the order from the Holy Office to leave Nomadelfia. He obeys, but they report him anyway and try him for fraud. Acquitted, but he must stay away from his family, who are forced to leave Fossoli, and don't really know not only how to live, but also where to go... He then accepts the offer of an abandoned agricultural estate near Grosseto from Countess Giovanna Albertoni Pirelli, where all his people take refuge. And he? In order to be able to respond to the difficulties alone, without endangering the Diocese and the Church as such, he asks and obtains - pro gratia - from the Pope to be reduced - so it was called at the time - to the lay state and therefore he can return to his family, of whom there are 400 left. It's 1953. Years pass, everyone's work and love, mothers, couples, kids, benefactors help solve the problems one by one, and little by little everything calms down, even the immediate fury of one's enemies. time, powerful priests and powerful lay politicians. Now in Nomadelfia all goods are in common, no money circulates, there is no private property, everyone works and no one is paid, each family has its own children and those of others without distinction. Whoever makes a mistake is forgiven, if he admits the mistake and repents, every day he has an hour of common reflection...
On 22 January 1962, with the permission of Pope Giovanni, Don Zeno was able to celebrate Mass again, his second first Mass: Nomadelfia became a parish and he was the new parish priest. In 1968 Nomadelfia received permission from the Ministry to open its own schools... Life continues and in August 1980 Don Zeno was able to bring his family, as a group, to visit John Paul II in the gardens of Castelgandolfo, for an "evening" of celebration and prayer , with the Pope proclaiming that "Nomadelfia", as a brotherhood that becomes law, is the rule of the Kingdom of God, and therefore that they are "forewarning and herald of the future world where we are all called".
Don Zeno's health gradually deteriorates, and on January 15, 1981, at the same time as John Paul II receives a delegation from Nomadelfia in the Vatican, a heart attack takes him away: perhaps he loved too much, and demanded too much from his heart now over eighty years old. Prophet of a future world that he has somehow made present. Free and obedient at the same time, born provocateur and peacemaker of many... Today he is a candidate for beatification. Making him a unique model would perhaps be excessive, in any case he was a fine example of a priest, in his blessed uniqueness a human and evangelical exemplar for many men and women of our time.