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Father Alex Zanotelli receives the “Trentino of the Year” award”
Friday, June 24, 2016
Father Alex Zanotelli, an Italian Comboni missionary, has received the “Trentino of the Year 2016” award on June 18 at the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento. It is a recognition given by the cultural group and the historical magazine “Uomo Città Territorio” to Zanotelli, 78 years of age, for his life spent to fight alongside the least ones, in defence of the weakest, of water as a common good, of justice and the safeguard of creation and in welcoming the immigrants. During the ceremony, the missionary has dedicated this prestigious award to the water-committees and to those who oppose the Tav, the high-speed train in the Brennero region.
On the right,
Fr. Alex Zanotelli,
Comboni missionary.
The journalist Francesca Caprini met Zanotelli during the demonstration against the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement between EU and the USA (TTIP), last May in Rome, and asked him “if there is a connection between his mission in the most violent neighbourhood of Europe and his militancy for water as the common good.” Zanotelli replied that “these are social conflicts that call everyone’s attention to their responsibilities in a divided society, where the State is absent, where common goods are sold off, fallen prey to the money god. The thread that links the struggle for water against organized crime, against treaties like the TTIP and the devastation of the land is very strong. It is necessary to change the course, to imagine a different model of society, one more just and more responsible.” This is a reflection that extends also to the refugees emergency, so that, adds the missionary, “the proposal made by the Renzi government to the European Commission to resolve the issue of the immigrants arriving from Africa, the so-called Migration Compact, is a bad step undertaken by Italy. The spirit is the same as that of the agreement that the European Union made with Turkey. It is a bargain made by putting the refugees’ skin at stake.”
Alex Zanotelli, born in Livo (Trento) in 1938 and ordained a priest in 1964, was first in Sudan, then director of the Italian Comboni magazine “Nigrizia” and then in the Korogocho slum of Nairobi, Kenya. For more than ten years he is living and working in the district of Sanità in Naples, where he steers civil battles like the one for the water as a public good. Zanotelli is the author of numerous articles and books, including “Korogocho” (Feltrinelli, 2003) and, for the EMI publishing house, “Voices of the Poor, voices of God” (2007) and “Hands off from the water” (2010).