The three days dedicated to Rimini has ended Don Oreste Benzi on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.
Open Friday 5 September with the mass on the beach chaired by the Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, President of the CEI, ended on Sunday with the Eucharist officiated by the Bishop of Rimini, Monsignor Nicolò Anselmi.
Don Oreste (1925-2007), simply “the Don” for his boys of the Pope John XXIII community, The association of faithful he founded, was a modern all -round social saint, which the president Matteo Fadda He compared to Leonardo da Vinci, who with his art was able to imagine the extraordinary works that could be born from a simple piece of marble by working only of chisel.
“So did Don Oreste, who showed us and helped to see and create the beauty of the free company”he said in the Rimini Theater on Saturday 6 September, highlighting one of the many prophecies of the Rimini priest.
As emerged from the many organized events, the social and humanitarian commitment of the servant of God Don Oreste Benzi, in fact, nHon limited himself to helping the poor, marginalized, disabled, prostitutes, drug addicts, former prisoners, AIDS sick peoplebut it was completed with the other side of the medal of charity: the reflection that opens the eyes and minds to the truth of things.
In fact, (only) it is not enough to help the needy, It is also necessary to eliminate the causes that force them to be only taxable persons of alms, and therefore always dependent on othersand instead become protagonists of their life, according to the design of God, rewarding, indeed rewarding, their work.
Strengthened by his preparation accrued in many years of study, as shown by his library of more than two thousand volumes, Don proposed what one of the speakers of the event, the economist Stefano Zamagni, He defined his “great revolution”, that is, the pursuit of the “free society”, of which many entrepreneurial realities related to Pope John XXIII are witnessed today.
It is a society with a human face, which says that It is not enough to help a brother in difficulty bring his cross, but that we must also stop producing the crosses that nail himacting because it becomes an active, co -responsible protagonist, and not just a taxable person. A vision that disputes the company of profit, now prevalent and characterized by rewarding above all the financial capital (whose protagonist is the manager in Zamagni’s explanation), and not enough the human one.
Many interventions. From that of the journalist of Happen Lucia Bellaspigafriend of Don, to that of the economist Luigino Bruni, who recalled the commitment to the peace of Don Oreste, and that of the Bishop of Rimini Niccolò Anselmiwhich underlined the dimension of prayer. The interventions on the trafficking of the women of Don Aldo Bonaiuto, a close collaborator for 15 years of Don Benzi, and that of the theologian are also interesting Elisabetta Casadeipostulator of the cause of canonization, which has just published the book The mystics of the Lisa tunic (Always ed.), Which traces the path of life with an official biography that puts a firm point on the main acquisitions that emerged so far in the canonical process.
