Brother Biagio Conte “Compassion”

Brother Biagio Conte is a Sicilian secular missionary. His role in the Mediterranean area has been very important in helping thousands of needy people from all over the world. His sense of compassion perfectly reflects the meaning of the word compassion, which means "to suffer together" and seems to be the etymology of Biagio Conte's life itself. When a person of good heart meets a suffering person, his first instinct is to solve his problem: sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't. In both cases, at the end we tend to leave this person to his own destiny. Biagio sticks around. He shares. Of course he tries to give shelter to those who do not have it, do feed the hungry, but his first effort is to share, to stay with the people, to live the same destiny of the poor and the suffering. This is the reason why his prayer often finds expression in the penitence of walking. To walk the streets of humanity is to walk together with man. And to make up for the pain that is the mother of all pains: solitude. This is a voluntary effort of participation to our neighbour's suffering, accompanied by a genuine desire to relieve them console with love and charity.

Story & images by Giacomo Palermo


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