Father Alex Zanotelli born August 26, 1938, Livo, Trentino (Italy) is a member of the Combonian missionaries in Verona. He is the founder of Italian movements whose goals include social harmony and equality. Biography Early life In the early 1960s, Zanotelli moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend a course on theology while he was in high school. In 1964, after completing his theological studies in Cincinnati, he was ordained a priest. Sudan and the Nuba As a Combonian missionary, he left for Southern Sudan, which was plagued by civil war and where he stayed for eight years. The local government eventually pressured him to leave because of his open Christian witness and the active solidarity he showed the Nuba people. The reasons cited by the government included Zanotelli's inclusion of African traditional ceremonials in mass celebrations. Vatican authorities also objected to this practice, although Zanotelli received permission from local Catholic bishops. This annoyed both the local Sudanese authorities (which feared a dangerous mixture between a foreign religion and the local rites and ceremonies of a downcast people), and senior prelates in Rome who were finding it hard to accept the reforms brought on by the Second Vatican Council. His sermons denounced injustices while exposing the responsibilities of corrupt government and administration officials who filled their pockets with both international and local aid funds. Director of "Nigrizia" magazine in Verona The house of the Combonians in Verona was a quiet place of gathering for most of the senior priests coming home from the mission fields, but it also hosted a printing company, publishing two different magazines: "The little missionary" and "Nigrizia", a magazine providing news about the various missions around the world and was first published back in 1883. In 1978 Zanotelli became director of "Nigrizia" and worked to make it more of an information monthly, with the goal to be summed up in his statement: "To be at Africa's service, specifically 'the voice of those who have no voice" to radically criticize the political-economical system of the north of the world and the way it produces more and more misery in the south, destroying the most beautiful, significant, authentical African values." Over the next decade, in his magazine Zanotelli took more specific stands on weapons dealing, on the cooperation for development having turned into an entangled business, on South African apartheid. All these matters had been taken on steadfastly and