Theresa Maggio

Last year, fra Biagio Conte carried a wooden cross frm Palermo to the Vatican where the pope granted him a half-hour private audience. This week, Pope francis returned the visit. here they are busy getting ready for the visit on Sept. 15.

 

 

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Despite the fact that the Palermo "Pink and Black" professional soccer team is going bankrupt, its owner, Maurizio Zamparini of Palermo, yesterday donated 50,000 euro
($59,140) to the incredible homeless mission founded and run by Fra Biagio Conte, a self-made monk who has dedicated his life to caring for "the Least Ones."
Maurizio Zamparini makes such a donation to the mission every year at Christmas season.
To learn more about Fra Biagio and his work for the homeless of Palermo, read my story in the most recent National Italian American Foundation magazine, Ambassador.  Read More 

Outgoing Sicilian Governor Rosario Crocetta was cleaning out his office and packing up mementos while La Reppublica photographer Igor Petyx was there with his camera. Crocetta picked up the bauble and said, " This gold Rolex encrusted with 60 diamonds has been my torment for the last five years. It was given to me by the last governor, Raffaele Lombardo who in his turn had received it as a gift from the Sultan of Oman. I have finally decided to get rid of it. I will give it to Biagio Conte. The diamonds will turn into loaves of bread for the poor of Palermo."
Fra Biagio Conte is a self-made monk who, with hundreds of volunteers and benefactors, feeds and houses more than a thousand homeless people every day in Palermo through his Mission of Hope and Charity. Read More 

"This is the real church," Palermo's brand new archbishop Corrado Lorefice said to those gathered to celebrate Christmas Eve at Fra Biagio Conte's Mission of Hope and Charity. Biagio, a lay brother who takes care of a thousand homeless people in three inner city homes for them in Palermo, welcomed the new archbishop to his shelter. Read More 

Italian director Pasquale Scimeca has completed work on his new biopic called "Biagio" about the early years of Biagio Conte's life and his beginnings as a lay missionary. Fra Biagio Conte has founded the La Missione di Speranza e Carita`, whose four urban missions in the Sicilian capital now house, feed, train and care  Read More 

Last week I visited the Women's Home, one of three centers comprising Brother Biagio Conte's Mission of Peace and Hope. It houses roughly a hundred homeless women, palermitans and immigrants, single women, women with young children and women with infants. It is housed inside the former convent of Saint Catherine of Sienna in Via  Read More