Don Luigi Ciotti

Don Luigi Ciotti is an Italian activist engaged in promoting social inclusion and emancipatory adult learning for people who are marginalized or at risk. For this ordained priest, it has been a lifelong pursuit.

Born in Pieve di Cadore, Italy, Ciotti moved with his family as a child to Turin, where as a young adult he worked with parish groups to found an organization to help young people and drug addicts on the street. He went on to be ordained priest in Turin in 1972. There he created Italy’s first “street university” (Università della Strada). From these beginnings, Ciotti has tirelessly worked for the past six decades to fight the problems of social exclusion connected to drug addiction, increasing levels of poverty and emigration, and most recently, organized crime.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ciotti’s efforts focused on providing counseling and recovery for young people with drug addiction problems. He established the Abele Group in the mid-1970s to further this work; its efforts today address not only drug-use-related challenges but social hardship more broadly. Among many programs, the organization offers research activities, a library, and educational courses for young people, social workers, and families.

In the 1990s, Ciotti expanded his work to the fight against organized crime. He founded Libera in 1995; the association, of which he is president, encourages civil society to strive against organized crime and to promote democratic legality and justice. Through the association, Ciotti coordinates more than 1,600 national and international entities opposed to organized crime. Libera’s first project was collecting 1 million signatures for a bill that provided for the social reuse of assets confiscated from the Mafia. The measure became law in 1996. As a result of the law, houses and buildings confiscated from the Mafia are used as venues for educational and cultural activities aimed at young people and adults.

Further, Ciotti created a model of a system for the adult learning of marginalized people that can be applied in other contexts. In this model of intervention, people at risk of social exclusion train and organize themselves to create and manage the assets stolen from crimes through their cooperatives and associations. Ciotti established a support system for these organizations that provides for the promotion of associations specialized in the field of social inclusion, the construction of networks for the training of adult education, the conducting of research activities, and the management of communication campaigns.

Ciotti is considered an undisputed moral authority in Italy. The author of more than a dozen books, he is published in numerous Italian newspapers and frequently appears on national television and media channels. In addition to his studies in theology, he has received honorary degrees from the University of Bologna, University of Foggia, the State University of Milan, the University of Parma, and the University of Pisa. He constantly engages in communication campaigns aimed at protecting individuals—immigrants, inmates, victims of crime—and also at obtaining political decisions and laws in favor of educational and social inclusion. In these campaigns, adult learning is seen as an integral part in promoting citizenship rights and the culture of democratic legality and social justice.