Hope

Biagio Conte was a man who abandoned a life of affluence to dedicate himself to the poor. His decision stemmed from a deep personal crisis and a hermitage experience, culminating in a pilgrimage to Assisi.
‘The Mission,’ said Brother Biagio, “was born from the profound experience of one who began to seek truth, true freedom and true peace, detaching himself from the materialistic and consumerist world”.
‘Brother Biagio Conte was a modern-day ‘Saint Francis’, charitable, courageous, an integral pacifist. He fought openly against poverty, indifference, environmental disasters, wars, the mafia, opulence, corruption, selfishness and racism in a difficult land like Sicily'.
He founded the ‘Cities of Joy’, reception centres for the poor and marginalised, where meals, housing and moral support are provided.
‘Muslims, atheists and Hindus know that in these places no one will try to impose another God on them’.
Biagio criticised consumerism and materialistic progress, calling for a return to more authentic values and respect for nature.
‘We no longer respect the true meaning of life, because we are slaves to consumerism, material well-being and progress, which is nothing but regression and malaise if we continue to live it at this frenetic pace’.
His figure is recognised as a symbol of hope, especially for young stragglers, refugees and prisoners, continuing to be a spiritual and social reference point.
‘The Mission of Hope and Charity is the symbol of a safe place where the derelict and the fragile find refuge and hope’.
And so Don Pino Vitrano (the Salesian missionary priest who shared with Biagio the birth of the Mission of Hope and Charity) declares that ‘what scares us is not the debts, but the bureaucracy. The rubber wall of institutions that until today have made life impossible'.
The Mission often faces financial difficulties, but continues to provide essential services for the most needy, filling the gaps left by the institutions.
If not fed, say the Mission guests, this community will gradually die out and the destitute will end up back on the streets.
They emphasise the importance of the support of citizens and civil society, highlighting how donations and voluntary work are crucial for the survival of the unique community Mission in the Mediterranean area.
‘Citizens help us, says Don Pino, but bureaucracy gets in our way’.
On 16 January 2014, it was announced that Biagio Conte, who had been confined to a wheelchair for years due to some crushed vertebrae, had started walking again the previous summer after an immersion in the waters of Lourdes, an event for which the doctors themselves ‘could not provide a plausible scientific explanation’.
On 12 January 2023, due to a severe form of colon cancer he had been fighting against for some time, he died in Palermo at the age of 59. The previous day, although severely debilitated, he had insistently asked to attend Mass, where he was carried on a stretcher to receive the Eucharist. The missionary was buried in the Citadel of the Poor and Hope in Via Decollati in Palermo.
For Pope Francis, the Angel of the last in the heart of the Mediterranean, has managed to ignite a Sicilian flame of Love, in the land that has been continually battered for centuries but where different cultures and multicultural traditions resist and coexist, which are the true souls of the ‘Cradle of Civilisation’ (Mare Magnum).
Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say: ‘If we do not have Peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another’ and this very principle has been the evangelical lay missionary path of Brother Biagio Conte in the Mediterranean Area where ‘Hope and Charity must coexist in harmony in respect of Universal Multicultural Equality’.