Don Mario Campidori would visit the homes of people with disabilities—not to observe, but to meet them, know them, and draw them out from the isolation of their walls. He would invite them to his parishes and, after introducing them to the community, no one could pretend they didn't exist. They became part of the fabric of parish life. In 1973, he founded Simpatia e amicizia (Sympathy and Friendship), whose first project was to build a village without barriers. Pastor Angelicus was born, forty kilometers outside Bologna, a place where everyone—with or without disabilities—could spend a holiday. Recently, that spirit moved into the city itself, into a building on the grounds of the diocesan seminary, renovated with funds from Faac, a well-known manufacturer of gate automation systems.
In 2018, Famiglia della Gioia (Family of Joy) opened its doors—a fully accessible home with an apartment, several bedrooms, and common areas where workshops and recreational, musical, and artistic activities take place. Groups use the apartment and rooms for weekends of autonomy and respite; for gatherings among friends; to stay near hospitals during family medical emergencies; to access a barrier-free facility during planned hospitalizations.
Twice a week, the kitchen workshop Le pappe di Pippo (Pippo's Dishes) focuses on fresh and dried filled pasta. "Silvia wanted to remember her son Filippo, who died with his father in an accident in 2009, through one of his great loves—cooking," explains Emanuele Giusti, the facility's coordinator since 2016. At twenty-eight, Giusti has trained as an economist, but here he works as cook, educator, and animator, drawing on years as a volunteer at the village. "At first, the pasta we made was just for the people in our program. But the quality was good, people loved it, and so the activity grew into a small workshop-restaurant serving home-style cooking. Now we sell to the public and host small catering events—birthday parties, graduation celebrations, aperitivos, dinners."
This intergenerational workshop ("our aim is the human family in its totality") brings together about twenty people with disabilities, four staff members, and ten to twelve volunteers—young people who have spent summers at the village, seminary students in formation, retired men and women. There's also a group of grandparents who share their daily wisdom: one, a ninety-year-old former cheesemaker, confessed that he felt useful and loved, passing on what he had cultivated throughout his life. People who had grown fragile through retirement, loneliness, personal hardship, or depression "find a sense of purpose, rebirth, and dignity." Beyond fresh pasta, the workshop produces dried pasta and pastries for holiday gift baskets and other occasions; there's packaging work that gives everyone space to contribute their own gifts.
The project keeps an eye on practical sustainability, but the real aim remains clear in all the activities offered—music, art, cooking, gardening, school visits: to carry on the founder's vision. Break the isolation that so many experience. Build friendship. Create opportunities that lighten the burden of daily life and give meaning to existence. It's something like a small miracle, happening right there in a diocesan seminary.