From 5 to 7 September 2025, in his land, the Pope John XXIII community and the diocese organize a dense program that intertwines memory and prophecy: the memory of a priest with a contagious smile and Lisa tunic, and the challenge of continuing his work alongside the discarded.
Born on September 7, 1925 in San Clemente, on the Rimini hills, Don Oreste grew up in a peasant family, soon learning the value of fatigue and solidarity. Ordained priest in 1949, he was chaplain in a parish of the sea: with the young he went to camping and in the mountains, but above all among the poor, where – he always said – “you can see the true face of Jesus”.
In the sixties he noticed that children and young people without family could not be simply assisted: it was necessary to share life with them. So in 1968 the first family home opened, seed of that community Pope John XXIII today widespread in dozens of countries worldwide. For him the Gospel was not theory: he passed the nights on the streets next to the exploited women, he knocked on the buildings of power asking justice, opened his door to anyone in need. With Don Elio he started the parish of Grotta Rossa, then a communist neighborhood: before the church he built a kindergarten, and celebrated mass in the garages.
The Rimini conference, entitled “The days of Don Oreste Benzi”retraces this path of the Gospel who lived, with relationships, round tables, testimonies of those who have known him and those who today carry on his inheritance. It will also be a moment of celebration: a large family gathered around those who loved and generated it, remembering the man who until his death – on November 2, 2007, at 82 years old – wanted to be among the last.
His message remains more current than ever: “Don’t let yourself be stolen the joy of loving and making you love”.
