The figure of Father Tonino Bello is truly an ever-new and ongoing discovery, having been declared venerable by Pope Francis on November 25, 2021. We want to rekindle his memory 30 years after his birth into heaven (April 20, 1993-April 20, 2023). In these words, shared in an interview with Vatican News, Trifone, Father Tonino's brother, encapsulates and distills his personal memories.

A man of God, a man of the people

«You know, when we went to visit him, he wasn't very happy? But not because he didn't want to see me and my daughters. Absolutely not... It was because he said that in that way he was taking time away from people who needed him. That was Tonino: he acted first and preached afterward; he didn't preach and then forget what he had said. He loved people and the poor. The other day I managed to find a recording in which he said: “When we are young, we all have a desire; when I was little, I dreamed of having a great career, that is, of becoming a saint.” My brother Marcello, who is no longer with us, and I had the feeling that he was a man of God, a man and a bishop of God. Now we are seeing it; everything is coming true...».

Who was Father Tonino?

A man of God, a man for others: Father Tonino returned to the Father's house on April 20, 1993, and today we want to remember him on his thirtieth anniversary. A man who truly was the salt of the earth and knew how to bring flavor to so many other lives, devoting himself humbly to others, first as a priest and then as a bishop. Appointed parish priest in Tricase, he stayed there for three years, from 1979 to 1982, and revolutionized the parish through his dynamic commitment and new, innovative choices. Father Tonino saw his church fill with countless people fascinated and won over by his homilies and his testimony of life and faith.
It was 1980 when he was first offered the appointment as a bishop, which he declined so as not to leave his people. On the third invitation, however, he accepted and became bishop of Molfetta-Ruvo-Giovinazzo-Terlizzi on August 10, 1982. He commented on this mission of his: «When I was appointed bishop, they put a ring on my finger, placed the crozier in my hands, gave me the Bible, and put the mitre on my head. These are the symbols of a bishop. It would be good if they gave a bishop a jug, a basin, and a towel to wash the world's feet».

It was the summer of 1991 when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, which led to his death two years later: “I do not know why we die. I am convinced, however, that the meaning of death, like that of life, friendship, justice, and the supreme meaning of God, is not found at the end of our reasoning, but always at the end of our commitment.”

The singer of Mary

Don Tonino's spiritual legacy is contained in the many writings he left us, which speak to us of a living, sincere, concrete faith that looks to God without ever forgetting humanity.
Don Tonino wrote extensively, but we like to remember him as a singer of the Virgin Mary, in the masterpiece Mary, Woman of Our Days, which helps us discover Mary as so close to us… a mother to whom we can turn with complete trust, certain that she will understand us in every fold of our daily lives.

“Meanwhile, Mary lived on earth.
Not in the clouds. Her thoughts were not airy-fairy. Her actions were bound, as if by an obligatory residence, to the boundaries of concrete things.
Even though ecstasy was the experience to which God often called her, she did not consider herself exempt from the effort of keeping her feet on the ground.
Far removed from the abstractions of visionaries, as well as from the evasions of the discontented and the escapes of illusionists, she stubbornly remained rooted in the terrible everyday.
But there is more: She lived a life common to everyone.
Similar, that is, to the life of the woman next door. She drank water from the same well. She pounded grain in the same mortar. She sat in the shade of the same courtyard. She too arrived tired in the evening, after a day's work.
One day, someone said to her too: “Mary, your hair is turning gray.” So she looked at herself in the fountain and felt, too, the poignant nostalgia of all women when they realize that youth is fading.
The surprises, however, did not end there, because learning that Mary's life was filled with family responsibilities and work like ours makes this woman so familiar with human hardships that it leads us to suspect that our painful everyday routine may not be as mundane as we think.”

The people's embrace

It is no surprise that 30 years ago, 70,000 people attended his funeral, stretching all the way to the harbor quay. Don Tonino's brother remembers that day this way: “Oh, please don't make me remember that day. I came out of the cathedral and saw all those people crying. I said to myself: why so many people? Why are they crying? What did my brother do? Little by little, I began to understand what Tonino had been, what he is, and what he will be for the Church—not only in Italy but throughout the world.”