Comunità Incontro (English: Community Encounter) is an Italian

drug rehabilitation Drug rehabilitation is the process of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. The general int ...

facility founded by Pierino Gelmini, an Italian Catholic priest, on 13 February 1963. The facility, which is based in Amelia, Italy, received substantial backlash following Gelmini's 1971 arrest on charges of

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

, as well as further accusations of child sexual abuse by Gelmini before his death in 2014.

Founding

Gelmini's experiences in Rome prompted his creation of the

group in Amelia when Gelmini purchased an abandoned mill and refurbished it to serve as a community therapy house after a personal encounter with an 18-year-old victim of a

drug addiction Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use can ...

lying in the middle of a

street gutter A street gutter is a depression that runs parallel to a road and is designed to collect rainwater that flows along the street diverting it into a storm drain. A gutter alleviates water buildup on a street, allows pedestrians to pass without walki ...

.Owen, Margaret (1989)
"New Hope for Sero-Positive Intravenous Drug Abusers in a Therapeutic Community House".
''Community Development Journal'' Vol. 24, No. 3. pp. 210-217. Oxford Journals. Retrieved 7 July 2010. (In publications, the Comunità Incontro records the 13 February 1963 date of Gelmini's meeting with the young drug addict, Alfredo Nunzi, as the date of its founding, although its first center at the Amelia mill was only opened on 27 September 1979.Comunità Incontro.
Associazioni. Diocesi di Terni Narni Amelia. Retrieved 9 July 2010. )

Expansion

Comunità Incontro successfully expanded into a veritable network of services dedicated to the addicted and their varieties of social problems. At the beginning of the 1990s, Gelmini volunteered to be injected with an experimental AIDS vaccine in a study dedicated to finding an approach to dealing with

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...

."Don Gelmini anti AIDS"
(29 June 1992). ''

Corriere della Sera (; ) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remain ...

'', p. 19. Retrieved 7 July 2010. Having established its first foreign center in 1987, the organization had grown to encompass more than two hundred chapters around the world by the late 2000s, including a number outside Italy and as far away as

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; 29 September 193612 June 2023) was an Italian Media proprietor, media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a mem ...

presented a speech on the occasion of Gelmini's birthday in January 2005. (Berlusconi donated a gift of

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by t ...

5 million to ''Comunità Incontro'' chapters in

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

following the

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time ( UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the sci ...

disaster."Ex-Priest Faces Abuse Charges"
(18 June 2010). AFP) The politician

Maurizio Gasparri Maurizio Gasparri (born 18 July 1956) is an Italian politician. Career Gasparri was born in Rome to parents of Campania, Campanian origins. He was educated at the Liceo Torquato Tasso in the city. In his civilian life he worked as a journalist ...

characterized him as "one of the few heroes of our time.""Eminent Italian Ex-Priest to Stand Trial for Abuse"
(18 June 2010).

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

. Retrieved 7 July 2010."Ex-Priest Indicted in Italy for Molesting Kids"
(18 June 2010).

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio broadcaster CBS. It is headquartered in New York City. CBS News television programs include ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs ''CBS News Sunday Morn ...

. Retrieved 7 July 2010.

Mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

reports worldwide have described Gelmini as politically well-connected.

References

{{reflist Drug rehabilitation