This afternoon, July 31, at the age of 96, don Antonio Mazzi, historic founder of the Exodus community, passed away. He was born on November 30, 1929. The news of don Antonio Mazzi’s death marks the loss of a key figure in the education and care of the most vulnerable.
Born in Verona in 1929, he dedicated his life to young people in difficulty, families in crisis, and those seeking a chance for redemption after addiction, prison, or marginalization. After studying Psychology and Psychopedagogy, and his first experiences – in the mid-Seventies – in the field of recovering young people from social marginalization in Veneto, he arrived in Milan at the end of the Seventies.
Since 1979 he became director of the Opera don Calabria in Milan on Pusiano street, near Parco Lambro. The evident severity of the drug addiction phenomenon pushed him to conceive the Exodus Project and to found the Exodus Community, which was established in 1980 for the recovery of drug-addicted youths. In 1984 he obtained from the Municipality the farmhouse “Molino Torrette,” which became the main headquarters of the Community and the Exodus Projects.
Civil and religious commitment
From there various other activities aimed at the Milan area also started. His name will always be linked to cultural and social battles, to denouncing marginalization and defending the dignity of the weakest. Throughout his long career, he received numerous recognitions for his civil and religious commitment, remaining until his last years a point of reference in public debate and in the third sector world. As a professional journalist, he cultivated many collaborations with national newspapers and magazines, also becoming a well-known face on television.
“An unfillable void”
The announcement of his death was made by the Exodus community itself this afternoon. “Surrounded until the end by the affection of his boys and educators – the foundation reports – don Antonio leaves an unfillable void. For over forty years he tirelessly led Exodus with dedication, transforming the street into a place of rebirth, redemption, and hope for thousands of fragile young people and their families, and opened new frontiers in Italy and worldwide, the poor world, through associations and cooperatives, carrying forward together the great message of hope in the human being and humanity. The entire Exodus community joins in memory and gratitude towards a man who dedicated his entire life to hospitality and education.”
“We lost a father”
“We lost a father, a man, in his own way a visionary – declares Franco Taverna, vice president of the Exodus Foundation –. A ‘crazy priest, borderline’ as he often liked to call himself, who never got tired of fighting to give back the future to many boys he met in his life. Don Antonio loved to repeat that it was not he who saved the boys, but that it was precisely his ‘difficult boys’ who saved him. Today the entire great Exodus family gathers around his memory. We do not mourn him with resignation, but we will celebrate him, continuing to carry forward his mission with the same passion, determination, and that healthy madness he passed on to us until the last day.”
The value of education
“His methodological approach focused on education, combined with an extraordinary overall vision, allowed rewriting the guidelines of pedagogical intervention in Italy – continues Taverna – The Foundation, confirming the full continuity of all ongoing operational and project activities, is committed to preserving and enhancing his vast scientific, educational, and moral heritage.”
“He taught us to walk”
“Don Antonio taught us to walk, often against the wind, but always together,” say the boys and Educators of the Exodus Foundation, who have been close to him over the years and shared many battles with him. “He always told us that ‘young people are not vessels to be filled, but fires to be lit.’ Today that fire is entrusted to us. We mourn an extraordinary father, gruff only on the surface, but endowed with infinite tenderness. The truest way to thank him will be to keep getting our hands dirty on the street, welcoming anyone who knocks on our door with the same smile with which he welcomed us.”
The funeral on Monday at Sant’Ambrogio
The last farewell to don Antonio Mazzi can be given in the mortuary chapel set up (“and open to all, without formalities, just as he liked”) inside Exodus, at the Cascina Molino Torrette in Parco Lambro, starting tomorrow Saturday, August 1, from 5 pm to 8 pm; and Sunday, August 2, from 9 am to 12 pm and from 5 pm to 8 pm. The funeral will be held on Monday, August 3 at 3 pm in the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio.
“It will not be a formal ceremony, but a living liturgy, animated by songs, music, and words of the boys and educators from all Exodus realities present in Italy and worldwide,” the Community reports. The burial will instead take place in a strictly private form at the abbey of Maguzzano (Brescia) in the cemetery of the Opera don Giovanni Calabria.
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