He was born on December 23, 1936 in Trezzo sull’Adda (MI). He came to know the Salesians of Treviglio and, fascinated by them, on August 16, 1954, made his religious profession in the Salesian Congregation. He graduated in Mathematics and Physics. He became a priest on April 10, 1965. Teaching and youth pastoral activities intertwined during the years he spent in Bologna, Pavia and Treviglio. At the Salesian Institute of Treviglio he taught mathematics and physics. In 1974, in Treviglio, he founded the non-governmental organization (NGO) Amici del Rwanda, later transformed into Amici dei Popoli, which enabled him to provide concrete aid for human development, but above all allowed him to give life to a form of education for global awareness that consists in preparing groups of young people whom he then accompanies to live for a month at Salesian missions, a kind of “master’s in humanity at the school of the poor”. In 1978 he was sent to Bologna as Parish Priest and Director of the Community in the Parish of San Giovanni Bosco: ten years of pastoral, social and missionary activities. His superiors called him to Turin in 1988 for two closely connected assignments: to give life to VIS, Volontariato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo, and to be the Missionary Animator for all Salesian Italy. He moved the headquarters of VIS to Rome, where the NGO flourished and reached the whole world with human development projects. Conferences, publications, educational aids and profiles of missionaries for missionary animation flourished, culminating every year in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin in a three-day event called Harambèe, which has become a stable national appointment. With this missionary spirit, he prepares and accompanies hundreds of volunteers who, for two or more years, support the Salesians’ human development projects in Poor Countries. Since 2009 he has been responsible for the management of the Salesian Work of the Sacred Heart in Bologna.
Italy