The sea, in the red cave, does not feel. Here, between the cement of public housing and the scent of the Romagnoli hills, Don Oreste Benzi planted his evangelical challenge: to give birth to the Pope John XXIII community. A country priest, son of farmers, who with a lisa tunic and a contagious smile changed forever to look at the most fragile.
Born on September 7, 1925 in San Clemente, on the hills of Rimini, Oreste Benzi grew up in a simple family, soon learning the value of work and solidarity. Ordained priest in 1949, he was chaplain in a parish of the sea, where he began to work with young people bringing them to the mountains, camping, but above all among the poor, where – he repeated – “you can see the true face of Jesus”. In the 1960s, faced with children and teenagers rejected by families or relegated to institutes, he understood that it was not enough to assist them: it was necessary to share life with them, to welcome them at home as children and brothers. So in 1968 the first family home opened, a sprout of that community Pope John XXIII who today is widespread in dozens of countries.
Recognizable for the clear gaze and the rough voice, Don Oreste passed the nights next to the exploited women, he knocked at the gates of the powerful to ask for justice, opened his home to the last. With Don Elio he was among the first parish priests of Grotta Rossa, a communist district then: before building the church he wanted a kindergarten and celebrated mass in the garages. He died on November 2, 2007, at 82, surrounded by the affection of his “great family” of poor people, friends and volunteers. Everyone left a greeting that it was a life program: “Be holy”, asking to aspire to the greatness even in the smallest things.
In Rimini, some of the people who have followed him from the beginning have also returned. Mirella Rossi, 69, from Savignano sul Rubicone, entered the family home as a girl after making a vote during a disease. “I found myself with twenty -seven boys in Coriano – he says – without knowing how to do it, but with the certainty that this was only needed: a family”. Next to her, in the parish of Grotta Rossa, there is Santina Tina Bartolini, 70 years old: to eighteen, without even knowing him, he said “yes” to the invitation of Don Benzi to become the mother of those who had nobody. That yes brought her to Zambia and then in Australia, with children who were no longer guests, but family.
In Saludecio, between the fields and the crops, Giuseppe “Pino” Pasolini, 82 years old, and his wife Daniela Ermini, 77, married for 54 years, made their home a family home for 52. “I did the nurse in an institution for the disabled, they were legal prisons,” says Pino. “With Don Oreste we understood that the answer was the family.” Today they tell about dozens of lives welcomed: people with disabilities, prostitutes, migrants, homeless. “We are not special – adds Daniela -, we are just a family that does not close the door”.
And his vision has not stopped to the past. In Rimini, in the “Nonno Oreste family home”, Valeria Miele live, 49 years old, and the Chilean husband Hiessel Ángel Parra Halvarez, 44 “Here there is no difference between natural children and welcomed – says Valeria -, you all love each other together ». Hiessel smiles: he arrived in Italy with a broken life and found refuge in the structure for homeless where Don Oreste spent the last few months and died. «I saw a father in him. Today I know that my life makes sense because someone loved me like this ».
The scene is simple, but powerful: a courtyard full of different faces that coexist in harmony. It is the sign that Don Oreste’s revolution did not stop: the lived gospel, not proclaimed, continues to generate future.
From 5 to 7 September 2025 Rimini celebrated his centenary with the conference “The days of Don Oreste Benzi”: three days of meetings, prayer and testimonies to remember the priest from the contagious smile and by the Lisa tunic, and to collect the challenge of continuing his work next to the discarded today. A feast of people, the great family gathered around those who loved and generated it.
His message remains more current than ever: “Don’t let yourself be stolen the joy of loving and making you love”. And on the issue on newsstands of Christian family Find a large report from Rimini, with a trip to the places of Don Benzi and in the first family homes that have given body to his dream.
Photo by Elisabetta Zavoli
