Nomadelfia is an intentional community in

Grosseto Grosseto () is a city and ''comune'' in the central Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of the Province of Grosseto. The city lies from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the Maremma, at the centre of an alluvial plain on the Ombrone river. It is the ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. It is composed of practising Catholics following a lifestyle inspired by the Acts of the Apostles, i.e. an attempted return to the early church. According to the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, Nomadelfia is a parish of married families and lay people, and to the Italian state it is a private association of citizens. The residents of Nomadelfi are not all members of the community; only after the age of 21 can someone decide to join. Nomadelfia does not use money, and those who do obtain income from outside the community pay into a central pot which helps provide for everyone.

Origins

The community was founded by

Zeno Saltini Zeno Saltini (30 August 1900 – 15 January 1981) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Nomadelfia movement. He also had set up a war orphans refuge at the old Fossoli di Carpi concentration camp in the Emilia-Romagna regio ...

. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, he turned a former concentration camp (the Fossoli di Carpi near Modena,

Emilia-Romagna egl, Emigliàn (man) egl, Emiglièna (woman) rgn, Rumagnòl (man) rgn, Rumagnòla (woman) it, Emiliano (man) it, Emiliana (woman) or it, Romagnolo (man) it, Romagnola (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title ...

) into a refuge for orphaned children. Saltini also set up a satellite community on the present site of Nomadelfia, in

Maremma The Maremma (, ; from Latin , "maritime and) is a coastal area of western central Italy, bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea. It includes much of south-western Tuscany and part of northern Lazio. It was formerly mostly marshland, often malarial, bu ...

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

. He was ordered to leave Fossoli in 1952 by the Church and Fossoli was closed, with huge debts; Saltini moved to the Nomadelfia site, and in 1962 he was recognized as its parish priest.''Utopian Dreams'', Tobias Jones, 2007, Faber and Faber Ltd, pp 58-59.

References

{{Villages of the Province of Grosseto Grosseto Catholic culture Catholic Church in Italy Christian communities