“Never trade honesty for a handful of lentils.” The strength of the secular thought of Don Tonino Bello, bishop of the diocese of Molfetta, Ruvo, Giovinazzo and Terlizzi, whose Dies Natalis anniversary is today, 20 April, is all here. And he goes straight to the heart.
One could dare, risking a definition that he wouldn’t mind at all, that Don Tonino was and still is an expert in public relations. And yes, because he who, when he didn’t use his legs as a means of locomotion, drove around driving a rickety Fiat 500, made his communication, his words and the strength of his ideas his most beautiful pastoral work.
Always on the front line. She understood that to talk to people it was necessary to immerse oneself in everyday life. Without asking. Without ever going up to the altar. Or rather, going down the street. Putting himself in the poor man’s eye. And he, a man without rhetoric, defeated death.
It is in the port of Bari when the Albanians disembark; he is in Gioia del Colle to protest against the cumbersome presence of armaments; on 31 December 1992 he marched in the name of peace; he is in the dark alleys of the city picking up beggars, offering his smile, his love for him; he is in the episcopate to welcome Mary, the woman of the people, the woman of the “popular districts, heavy with sweat and soaked in stabbio, where the hovels of the poor, if they still remain standing, it is because they support each other”; she is on the port to talk to the fishermen, at the station to meet drug addicts, in the suburbs to accompany the most vulnerable.
And today, more than ever, his thoughts resonate today. And the need for Peace breaks into our consciences.
Tags: City Molfetta Thirtyone years Dies Natalis Don Tonino Bello memory Mayor Minervini
