He died at 94 years old Father Eligioand with him goes one of the most surprising, restless and unconventional religious people in Italian history. He was not, in fact, a friar like the others, and perhaps for this very reason he was able to enter the darkest territories of existence. There where few wanted to look, there where so many young people had fallen into loneliness and drug addiction, he still saw a possibility.
«Loving man»: the beginning of a restless vocation
Born in 1931 as Angiolino Gelmini in the Bisentrate village, a hamlet of Pozzuolo Martesana, Milan’s hinterland, Father Eligio was the younger brother of another religious man, Don Pierino Gelmini, founder of Comunità Incontro.
In Father Eligio there was a tension, a hunger for life that could not be satisfied by remaining inside the sacristies. The Gospel, for him, was an invitation to go out, to go, to seek. So, as a young priest, he began to meet those who were drowning in the silent pain of the city: the lonely people, the desperate, those who no longer had anyone to call.
A voice in the darkness: Telefono Amico is born
It was 1964 when the first one was born Friendly Phone. A simple and revolutionary idea: offering a voice to those who, in the night, had lost all support. The first call, on January 23, came from a woman who had just attempted suicide and marked the beginning of a service that would save entire lives over the years.
Father Eligio listened to everything: the suffocated crying, the fear, the desire to end it all. And to each one he gave back a word that did not judge but welcomed. Among those rumors was also Alda Merini, who was then unknown and dictated poetry into the cornet. From then on, the lines multiplied: today there are eight with a hundred volunteers, six-hour shifts, over ten million phone calls a year directed to the switchboards of the convent of Sant’Angelo, in Milan, where Father Eligio lived.
Father Eligio Gelmini between the then Minister of Health Rosy Bindi and the Prime Minister Romano Prodi at the inauguration of the “Cielo 91” community in 1998
(HANDLE)
World X: where those who have fallen walk again
Then came the devastating season of heroin. Hundreds of kids burned by the void, families destroyed, suburbs on their knees. Father Eligio understood that the telephone was no longer enough. We needed places to be reborn. Thus in 1967 the Mondo In Cozzo, in Cetona, on the Egadi islands, up to Mount Tabor in Israel: each community became home, work, silence, discipline, brotherhood. It was a hard, demanding journey. Many young people, thanks to him, have rediscovered their name, their dignity, the will to live.
An unconventional brother
Father Eligio had a style of his own. The Ray-Bans, the ankle boots, the quick pace, the ready joke. In the 1960s he even became the spiritual father of Milan, becoming associated with Gianni Rivera, who defined him as a man capable of seeing in the shadows: «I met him at an initiative on young people. I discovered a world far from mine and fell in love with it. Since then, as soon as I can, I go to visit the guys from Mondo X”, the great Rossoneri champion once said.
For his almost constant presence at San Siro when Milan played in the sixties and seventies they nicknamed him “brother dribbling”. The exterior, of course, intrigued. But what was really striking was the way he looked at people: not for what they had done, but for what they could still become.
«I will not be a quiet son but freedom from everything and love for Man have given peace to my heart and passion to my life», once said the religious man, author of the volume in 1975 The Cows.
And it’s true: Father Eligio was never accommodating. He didn’t look for consensus or protocols. He went in search of the last and the discarded. Always with his assault friar style.
