Biagio Conte (missionary)

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Biagio Conte (born September 16, 1963 in Palermo ) is an Italian lay missionary . He founded the Missione di Speranza e Carità to raise awareness of poverty and exclusion in his hometown.

biography

The son of a building contractor was brought to Switzerland in a nuns' school at the age of three, returned to Palermo at the age of nine, and was then enrolled in the San Martino delle Scale school for four years. He left middle school at the age of 16 and started working in his family's construction company. In 1983 he left his family and went to Florence . In May 1990 he decided to live as a hermit. He retired to the mountains of the Sicilian hinterland and went on a hike to Assisi .

After his return to Palermo, he was initially active in bringing consolation to the homeless at the main train station in Palermo , for which he fought in various protests. He used some of the rooms in Via Archirafi, where he founded the Missione di Speranza e Carità in 1993 .

In 2015 he took part in the Palermo Pride parade, the annual city event in favor of LGBT rights, to convey a message of peace and brotherhood to the participants.

After the death of some homeless people on the streets of Palermo, in 2018 he decided to sleep under the porticoes of the Palazzo delle Poste centrale as a sign of protest against poverty in the streets and started a ten-day hunger strike. The region later financed the expansion of the Via Decollati mission.

On January 16, 2014, it was announced that Biagio Conte, who had been in a wheelchair for years because of his crushed vertebrae due to his efforts in the mission, had started swimming in the waters of Lourdes after a dive last summer .

Between 2014 and 2015, the film Biagio was produced by Pasquale Scimeca from Palermo, which tells the life and work of Conte in a flashback.

Web pages

Works

  • Il viaggio della “speranza” affinché l'uomo possa migliorare . o. V., Palermo 1991, OPAC of it. National Library .
  • The cammino della speranza . Grafill, Palermo 1995, OCLC 955010909 .
  • with Giacomo Pilati: La città dei poveri. La mia vita per gli ultimi . Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, Trapani 2006, ISBN 88-87324-80-8 .

literature

  • Fabio Puleo: La forza del virgulto. Biagio Conte: una scelta, un cammino, la speranza . Salerno Arti Grafiche, Palermo 199 ?, OCLC 746281320 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Palermo Pride 2015, migliaia in corteo per difendere i diritti di tutti. Retrieved February 23, 2019 (Italian).
  2. ↑ Palermo, la Regione finanzia la missione di Biagio Conte. March 1, 2018, accessed February 23, 2019 (Italian).
  3. ↑ Biagio Conte torna a camminare "E 'stato un miracolo". Retrieved February 23, 2019 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Biagio. Retrieved February 23, 2019 .

Filmography

  • Biagio., Regia di Pasquale Scimeca, Italia, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Conte, Biagio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian lay missionary
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo