Don Zeno Saltini, like Don Gnocchi before him, was shaken by the poverty, hunger, and abandonment of thousands of children in postwar Italy. He resolved to take them in, to build with them a "Nomadelfia"—a city of brothers.
Strong-willed and exacting, he refused to be intimidated by countless obstacles, by the lack of money, by indifference from the powerful. He went his own way, trusting in the Lord with his whole heart. But his generosity knew no bounds. He welcomed anyone who knocked on his door, forgetting that Providence requires discernment as well as charity. The path he chose was arduous. The bishops who confronted him, the obstacles that multiplied—none of it slowed him down. Instead, he quarreled with everyone: the powerful of society, the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They would not understand. They abandoned him, persecuted him, could not bear his stubborn insistence on doing good for his adopted children. This book traces the history of Nomadelfia and, through it, the painful, dramatic story of so many Italian families broken by the last war. The numerous handwritten documents from Don Zeno that form the heart of the book make the reading somewhat dense, but they allow us to see up close the fervor—excessive though it was—of this great priest.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2006