Pierino Gelmini

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Pietro "Pierino" Gelmini (20 January 1925 – 12 August 2014) was a prominent

drug abuse rehabilitation center Comunità Incontro (Community Encounter).[1]

Despite his 1971 imprisonment on charges of

Italian Senator Maurizio Gasparri, who once celebrated him as "one of the few heroes of our time."[2][3]

Personally accused of

laicized from the priesthood at his own request.[3]

Biography

Pierino Gelmini was born Pietro Gelmini in 1925 in

priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church in 1949. Gelmini's younger brother, Angelo Gelmini (born 1931), was ordained in 1952 and is well known as Padre Eligio. Gelmini transferred to work in Rome in the 1950s where he become the personal secretary of the Argentine cardinal Luic Copello and established himself at the Infernetto, a suburb under Rome Municipio X.[5]

Gelmini's experiences in Rome prompted his creation of the

drug addiction lying in the middle of a street gutter.[6] (In publications, the Comunità Incontro records the 13 February 1963 date of Gelmini's meeting with the young drug addict, Alfredo Nunzi, as the date of its founding, although its first center at the Amelia mill was only opened on 27 September 1979.[4][7]
)

Italian

cessatio a divinis) during this time, he was forgiven by the Catholic Church and continued working within its hierarchy.[9] Such less-than-pleasant facts were not widely publicized in the press at the time and were systematically omitted from all of Gelmini's official biographies.[9] Gelmini's last run-in with the law before the filing of sexual abuse charges in the 2000s occurred in 1976, when he was investigated for corruption but acquitted in court in 1977.[10]

Despite such personal troubles, Comunità Incontro successfully expanded into a veritable network of services dedicated to the addicted and their varieties of social problems. At the beginning of the 1990s, Gelmini volunteered to be injected with an experimental

AIDS vaccine in a study dedicated to finding an approach to dealing with HIV.[11]

A highly visible social figure towards the end of the 1980s, Gelmini produced written works in the 1990s which described both Centro Incontro's therapeutic approach and his own experiences. Some writing was translated into

Slovenian and French; a 1993 English translation, A Plan for Life Community Encounter: Origins, History, Growth, was printed in the United Kingdom
by St. Paul's Press. In Italy, Gelmini's work became a subject of various domestic writers.

Having established its first foreign center in 1987, the Comunità Incontro organization had grown to encompass more than two hundred chapters around the world by the late 2000s, including a number outside Italy and as far away as

€ 5 million to Comunità Incontro chapters in Thailand following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster.[2]) The politician Maurizio Gasparri characterized him as "one of the few heroes of our time."[3] Mass media reports worldwide have described Gelmini as politically well-connected.[3][12]

Two years before, Gelmine had been reduced to the lay state after the charges of minor sexual abuse.[13]

Controversy

Abuse accusations and anti-Jewish sentiments

In 2007, nine young men levelled accusations that Gelmini had

laicized at his own request to Pope Benedict XVI.[3]

A

Independent Online provided a translation of remarks Gelmini had made to the Corriere della Sera. Gelmini was quoted as saying

Think about what happened in America, the instrumentalisation of American paedophile priests. The church made an error in paying compensation. If I make a mistake, the entire Catholic Church should not have to pay for me. . .

But this seems as if it was a strategic act made by this global lobby - how shall I put it - the fashionable radical Jewish lobby, which emanates from America. . . and tries to weaken the whole church.[16]

Gelmini reversed himself after the issue of anti-Jewish hostility was raised and extended an apology to the Jews for his remarks.

Freemasons, he was quoted by the Italian press as saying "I apologize to the Jews: I have very much respect and consideration for them, but I think there is a Masonic lodge radical chic fighting the Church on all fronts. . ."[17]

As prosecutors moved forward with an indictment in June 2010, Gelmini dismissed the accusations as a "denigrating campaign of lies" and described the allegations as unfounded and impossible because of his advanced age at the time of the alleged abuse episodes.[12] Defense lawyer Lanfranco Frezza offered the explanation that some of the accusers bore a grudge against Gelmini because they had been kicked out of the center for theft and other improper behavior and asserted that "no proof" would be forthcoming to support their claims.[12]

Gelmini's trial was due to start in 2011,[10][12][18] but was deferred several times, also due to his declining wealth conditions, and with his death in 2014 cannot be held anymore, as any crime would get extinct.

Anti-Islamic sentiments

Politically close to the centre-right, in March 2000 Gelmini participated in the presentation of the "manifesto" of the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) values and ideas without compromise as the face of the fight against drugs,[19] but embarrassed Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini when he declared that "... the Muslims in Italy will soon be 10-15% of the population and they will put at risk the purity of our values. A time has come for them to plunder our cities; today they have a buzzword: marry Catholic women to convert them to Islam. It is necessary to stop this vermin.".[20]

Works

In English translation:

  • A Plan for Life Community Encounter: Origins, History, Growth Slough, UK: St. Paul's, 1993.

In Italian:

  • Proposta di vita: la Comunità Incontro : genesi, storia, sviluppo. Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1992.
  • Don Gelmini incontra la musica italiana a Rock café. Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1993.
  • Fiori di mare. Pensieri. Turin: San Paolo Edizioni, 1999.
  • with Alessandro Meluzzi: Cristoterapia. Dialogo di vita fonte di speranza. Roma Morena: Edizioni OCD, 2007.

Distinctions

References

  1. ^ Guerrera, Antonello (13 August 2014). "E' morto don Gelmini, il prete anti-droga amico di Berlusconi" (in Italian). la Repubblica. Retrieved 26 September 2014.
  2. ^ a b "Ex-Priest Faces Abuse Charges" (18 June 2010). AFP. News24. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g "Eminent Italian Ex-Priest to Stand Trial for Abuse" (18 June 2010). Reuters. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  4. ^ a b Don Pierino Gelmini. Comunità Incontro. Retrieved 7 July 2010. (in Italian)
  5. ^ "La scomparsa di don Gelmini: ombre e luci di prete anti-droga" (in Italian). August 8, 2014. Retrieved April 17, 2021 – via archive.is. {{cite web}}: External link in |via= (help)
  6. ^ Owen, Margaret (1989). "New Hope for Sero-Positive Intravenous Drug Abusers in a Therapeutic Community House". Community Development Journal Vol. 24, No. 3. pp. 210-217. Oxford Journals. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  7. ^ Comunità Incontro. Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine Associazioni. Diocesi di Terni Narni Amelia. Retrieved 9 July 2010. (in Italian)
  8. ^ a b c Nazzi, Stefano (22 June 2010). "Don Gelmini, il bene e il male". Il Post. Retrieved 9 July 2010. (in Italian)
  9. ^ a b c d e "La vera storia di don Pierino: 'Quattro anni passati in carcere'" (5 August 2007). Quotidiano.net. Retrieved 7 July 2010. (in Italian)
  10. ^ a b c d e Giannino, Alberto (18 June 2010). "Pierino Gelmini: un ex prete, rico e potente, rinviato a giudizio per molestie sessuali". IMGPress. Retrieved 9 July 2010. (in Italian)
  11. ^ "Don Gelmini anti AIDS" (29 June 1992). Corriere della Sera, p. 19. Retrieved 7 July 2010. (in Italian)
  12. ^ a b c d "Ex-Priest Indicted in Italy for Molesting Kids" (18 June 2010). Associated Press. CBS News. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  13. ^ "Molestie sessuali. Morto l'impunito don Gelmini" (in Italian). 13 August 2014. Archived from the original on March 27, 2017.
  14. ^ "Terni, indagato don Gelmini. L'accusa è di abusi sessuali" (3 August 2007). La Repubblica. Retrieved 9 July 2010. (in Italian)
  15. ^ Fisher, Ian (17 August 2008). "Vatican Plays Down Meeting That Angered Jewish Groups". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  16. Independent Online
    . Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  17. ^ a b "Chiedo scusa agli ebrei" (7 August 2008). Quotidiano.net. Retrieved 7 July 2010. (in Italian)
  18. ^ "Italian Priest Charged with Molesting Youngsters" (18 June 2010). BBC News. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  19. ^ Radicale, Radio (March 4, 2000). ""Valori e idee senza compromessi" presentazione del "manifesto" di Alleanza Nazionale in videocollegamento con 14 capoluoghi di Regione (c/o Hotel Parco dei Principio - via Gerolamo Frescobaldi, 5)". Radio Radicale.
  20. ^ "Archivio Corriere della Sera". archivio.corriere.it.
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