Olinto Marella

Olinto Marella was born on 14 June 1882 in Pellestrina, a fishing community on a narrow island in the Venetian lagoon in northeastern Italy. His family was of modest means; his father worked as a municipal employee. From youth he showed both intellectual ability and a vocation to the priesthood. After seminary studies he was ordained a priest on 17 December 1904. He continued his formation in Rome, including work at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and was regarded as a cultured cleric with interests in philosophy, letters, and the social questions of the early twentieth century. In those years he formed a lasting friendship with Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII.

The pontificate of Pius X was marked by a severe campaign against theological modernism. Marella’s contacts with priests and intellectuals associated with that current, above all Ernesto Buonaiuti, brought him under suspicion. Church authorities imposed a suspension a divinis, interrupting for a time his public exercise of ministry. The episode left a deep mark on him. After this period of restriction he was received in the Archdiocese of Bologna, where he rebuilt his priestly life not in academic chairs but among the poorest. He chose extreme personal simplicity, often collecting scrap and discarded materials in order to support those who had nothing.

In Bologna and especially around San Lazzaro di Savena, Don Marella became known as a priest of the streets and of the discarded. He opened hospitality to the homeless, to abandoned adolescents, and to people living on the margins of industrial and postwar Italian society. From this work grew the Opera di Don Marella: houses of charity and communities in which the poor were not merely assisted but given a measure of dignity and family-like belonging. His method was practical and evangelical. He lived among those he served, shared their poverty, and declined honors. He remained in friendship and correspondence with Roncalli, who as pope continued to esteem him.

Marella died on 6 September 1969 in San Lazzaro di Savena. Devotion to the priest of the poor spread in Emilia-Romagna and beyond. After the diocesan inquiry, his heroic virtues were recognized and a miracle was attributed to his intercession. Pope Francis approved the beatification, which was celebrated in Bologna on 4 October 2020. Blessed Olinto Marella is commemorated on 6 September and remembered as a witness to priestly charity toward the poor and the discarded.