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Home / Awards / Servitor Pacis Award / 1999 THE SERVITOR PACIS AWARD RECIPIENTS 1999 - Don Pietro Gelmini Born in Pozzuolo Martesana in the Milan province of Italy in 1925, Don Pietro Gelmini is the founder of Comunità Incontro (Community Encounter), an organization dedicated to the assistance of drug addicts, alcoholics, the elderly, physically and mentally disabled and marginalised, the abandoned and those particularly in need. Ordained a priest in Grosseto in 1949, he initially served as a parish priest and was later sent to Rome to be an assistant in Associazione Cattolica Lavoratori Italiani (Italian Catholic Workers Association). He was then appointed as Secretary to His Eminence Santiago Luis Cardinal Copello, the then-Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. On 13 February 1963, Don Gelmini met a drug addict named Alfredo in the Piazza Navona in Rome. This meeting was the starting point for Community Encounter; he immediately began to take in the street children of the city. In 1969, he moved to the Infernetto, near Casal Palocco, and began planning the initial organizational structure. Community Encounter established its first major center, which was run directly by its residents, in Amelia in 1979. Community Encounter has grown at a steady pace to become an international endeavor. In 1987, a community center Molino de Sierra was opened in Spain, and in 1988, Don Gelmini signed an agreement with the government of Thailand to build a center near Bangkok, as well as ones near the boarders of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. This agreement allowed the transfer of some drug addicts from prisons to the centers. In 1988, he was made a Mitred Exarch of the Greek-Melkite Catholic Church, which led to the expansion of Community Encounter to the Middle East. Centers were soon established in Lebanon and Syria. His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, also invited Don Gelmini to establish a center for Palestinians in the Holy Land. Projects for communities in North America are underway. Community Encounter now has 160 residential centers in 14 countries and hosts more than 5,000 youth, drug addicts, single mothers and other poor people. Don Gelmini’s organization has also expanded beyond the residential centers by publishing a bimonthly magazine Il Cammino, starting in 1984, followed by its newsletter Esser-C.I. in 1992 and a local radio and television program Umbriaviva in 1994. In 1996, an agreement was signed by Community Encounter and the University of Perugia for the implementation of three university courses for rehabilitated residents. Don Gelmini volunteered to test new anti-HIV vaccines in 1990, and has continued to serve the needs of others throughout the world. For this tireless and selfless devotion to the good of others, he has been honored by the National Italian American Foundation and by many other national and international organizations. For his care of the poor and sick, which humbly began through a chance meeting with one man but, like a mustard seed, has grown to cover and serve people in many nations, the Path to Peace Foundation is pleased to bestow upon Don Pietro Gelmini the title of “Servitor Pacis” - Servant of Peace.
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