Versione Italiana

Massimo Coppo recently has written the involving book "From the land of Assisi and of Francis the Spirit of prohecy", which is enjoying an unexpected consent: a book documenting the story of a prophet of our times, full of miraculous episodes and fascinating witnesses of human solidarity.

 

Books on a prophetic work risen in Assisi more than thirty years ago,
which is involving the world.

A short biographic account concerning the author:

Massimo Coppo, son of the writer and teacher of Arts and Philosophy Alberto Coppo, was born at Foligno (Perugia) the 10th of May, 1948. He received a diploma in classical studies (liceo classico), and won a scholarship of the American Field Service, so attending the Columbus High School in the State of Indiana. Later he took a degree in agricultural sciences, with first class honours, then becoming a teacher. He left everything after the meeting with Marcello Ciai, and held as a volunteer in the Association IACA the task of treasurer and responsible for the agricultural sector. Since 2010, after a particular call he is staying night and day in Assisi, in a penitential mission of prayer and Christian witness.


Here some pieces of a beautiful article published in the "Corriere dell’Umbria" on Massimo Coppo of Assisi

St. Francis is alive!
By Carlo Antonio Ponti

Today’s Francis, which you can meet in the evening under the portico of the Basilica of Assisi, elevated to accommodate
the pilgrims and penitents, calves and feet purple from the cold because barefoot
- Francis he says, went barefoot, only after receiving the Sacred Stigmata, Santa Chiara forced him to put on sandals -
and dressed in a jute sack with a hood...
 While talking he asks me who I am, I say I'm a reporter, then the lay brother covered with rags and a woolly beard and lived legs,
confides to me that his father too was a journalist and a writer. I ask about the name: "Alberto Coppo".
I exclaim that I knew him well, but look what a case! No, it's Providence, he whispers, the light in the blue eyes that defy the frost and the dark.
Alberto Coppo! His "Fuori Verde" in 1957 won the Prix Européen of Geneva for unpublished novels.
 The little poor of January 2013, his son, his name is Massimo, is about sixty years old, he has a degree of master
frequented in the United States, he has a degree in agricultural sciences with first class honours in Perugia.
Now Massimo (Coppo) goes barefoot in the streets of Umbria - I am sure happier than Depardieu and Putin -,
with a sack and a cane in perfect joy in the footsteps of who married Lady Poverty.
 


Here is a short account of the vicissitudes lived, in the land of Assisi, by Massimo Coppo and his community "Famiglie di Betlemme", founded in 1980 by Marcello Ciai.

It was in the month of November 1998, when Massimo Coppo saw his driver's licence withdrawn because considered to be a heretic. Residing in Assisi, at Rocca Sant'Angelo, in the "Community  Bethlehem Family"; a community of Benedictine inspiration of prayer and labour "Ora et labora".

After about 2 years, the driver's licence has been returned to him on December 11 2000 !!

From an article published in that period by an important national newspaper in the Front Page:

 

Front Page

 

You are an Heretic ?
 Therefore I withdraw your driver's licence!

ITALY OF THE MIRACLES

By ITALO CARMIGNANI

Barefoot, and humbly clothed in sackcloth, a placard round his neck and staring-eyes, he seemed to be more like the image of a Franciscan "sui generis" than that of a convinced heretic. It was the 30th of October 1998 and one week later, Massimo Coppo, fifty-one years old, with a degree in Agriculture with full marks, a family, various acres of land between the hills of Assisi, found out that five minutes on St. Peter's Square, barefoot and sackclothed can change your life. After a week from that peaceful, harmless and painless demonstration, he has become an "unwanted person", addressee of an expulsion-order and excluded from the capital for at least one year. Furthermore, after a month of that same 30th of October 1998 even more happened: Coppo found out that he cannot even drive anymore neither a car nor a tractor.
The Prefecture of Perugia, in fact, withdrew his driver's licence because they considered immoral.
...Massimo Coppo had a direct clash with the inspectors of the Vatican and with article 120 of the highway-code.
The first are in control of public order within the Vatican-City, the other values the morality of the car-driver and regulates in this way the possession of the driver's licence.
Let the immoral tremble, the driver's licence has been marked.

Yet in Rome he arrived only to demonstrate against the declaration of heresy with which his group, the community Bethlehem Families, had been charged......

In Vatican clothed in rags:  is an heretic, let's take his driver's license.

He is considered an heretic, but only because he was clothed in rags and so, like Saint Francis, he went to the Vatican.
His name is Massimo Coppo and due to his firm beliefs he has been pointed at by the church.  Also the State chased him. An old rule of the highway-code explains that for having the driver's license one needs to be morally integral. A heretic is not so, the more over if consignee, as he is, of an expulsion order. Therefore the Prefecture, based on the  report of the police, took his driver's license.

 

 


Monsignor  Sergio Goretti  bishop of Assisi

Showing the text of the placard from which has originated the whole story :
(Assisi : from the notification published by the Bishop of Assisi in February 1994 against the Community "Famiglie di Betlemme")


BISHOP'S  NOTIFICATION

A) This group, notwithstanding the  remarkable efforts to bring it back in the bosom of the Church, is heretic.
They believe in fact to have the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel, present above all in the person of Marcello Ciai.
B) It has changed residence and name. Denominated itself "Oriente Fumante" to remember the covenant God had stipulated with Abraham, which the group through the spirit of Ezekiel, intended to restore in its primitive situation. Then they called themselves "Comunità dei Centoniani" for the fact that its members had to wear cloths made of 100 patches or wear sackcloths and go around barefooted to manifest the necessity that the Church has to be purified.  Hence they assumed the name of "Famiglie di Betlemme" and now that of International Association of Christian Activity.
C) The group various times has distinguished itself for public offence against the ecclesial hierarchy and institutions.

                                                              +    Sergio  Goretti 

NOTE :

The editorial-staff of the IACA retains necessary, answering to those who ask explanations as to the notification of the bishop, to clarify that :

1 - The notification involves and confuses the IACA, being a NON PROFIT association and thus an institutional reality, with the “Famiglie di Betlemme”, a small monastic community of families which lives for over twentyfive years its prophetic vocation in the Land of Assisi.  

2 - For the so-called "public offences" we do not believe that you can consider "offences" critical expressions or of disagreement on the declarations and/or behaviours of an ecclesiastic authority.

NB - It is not true that the community and Marcello Ciai believe to have the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel.

For more information write directly to: witness@assisi-francesco.net


 ****

Here how the case has been presented in the weekly programme TERRA of 

 
Terra
Edited by Lamberto Sposini 

Episode 9 of 01.13.2001

Only in italian language

 
Expulsions

Rejected at the fringe of the society as a foreign matter : to expel and to be expelled is one of the most traumatic experiences, for he who sustains it, for he who imposes, for he who is a witness.It concerns a social gathering, a religious community, a family, a game, a professional association or a group of friends without written rules, the expulsion is the conclusion of a process, recognizing in the one who has been expelled the refusal of the rule, bringing the group to give itself a definition, looking at the unworthy, the outrageous, the bad who departs at the fringes. And he who has been expelled?  Nothing remains to him but to act the admission of his guilt and meditate his humble return on tiptoes ? No, the stories of this episode do have protagonists who feel to have suffered a fault and see in their return an indemnity that will never completely heal the injustice sustained.

"Me, the poor man of Assisi"


It is difficult, as for going on barefoot, to go along the road of the Saint of Italy, Francis of Assisi.  Yet a man with a meek aspect, stubborn, has tried it. Ending up, not knowing how unavoidable, in collision with the Church. Christina Bianchino has investigated among condamns and complains, among accuses of the bishop vicar and good popular sense.
The story of a poor man, who not only doesn't talk to wolves nor to birds, but  has difficulty to make himself understood by the community of which he feels to be a son, notwithstanding the expulsion.

 
 


Here a peculiar comment on the prophecies of Marcello:

From the important Italian newspaper  "La Stampa" an article signed by the famous writer Guido Ceronetti, regarding another vision preceding for a little the attempt on the Pope of 1981.

 
...The breakdown between prophetism and priesthood is always unevitable. Nevertheless, turning over the pages  of the smoking prophecies of  Marcello (today about sixty, white beard, human warmth) you read, that on the first of May 1981 he had the vision of the Pope seriously ill, standing "behind a small white hospital table".
Thirteen days later there was the attempt of Agcà, and it is true that the Pope, though injured, remained 
"on his feet"....

Guido Ceronetti

 

 

 Write us

Finally in 2006, this story, which has begun in February 1994, has ended successfully: the Bishop of Assisi Monsignor Sergio Goretti has revoked the notification of "heresy", thus redeeming the "Community Families of Bethlehem" within the Catholic Church, and therefore also Massimo Coppo.

 

In the Blog di Domustation:

 

For further relevant informations see:

Community Families of Bethlehem

www.ciai-s.net/FrontPage.htm


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