See hereunder

 "I detest what you say, but I'll defend until death your right to say so"   Voltaire 

 

First a note regarding the case, from an article published in that period by an important national newspaper in the Front Page.

Front Page   You are an Heretic ? Therefore I withdraw your driver's licence! ITALY OF THE MIRACLES By ITALO CARMIGNANI Barefoot, and humbly clothed in sackcloth, a placard round his neck and staring-eyes, he seemed to be more like the image of a Franciscan "sui generis" than that of a convinced heretic. It was the 30th of October 1998 and one week later, Massimo Coppo, fifty-one years old, with a degree in Agriculture with full marks, a family, various acres of land between the hills of Assisi, found out that five minutes on St. Peter's Square, barefoot and sackclothed can change your life. After a week from that peaceful, harmless and painless demonstration, he has become an "unwanted person", addressee of an expulsion-order and excluded from the capital for at least one year. Furthermore, after a month of that same 30th of October 1998 even more happened: Coppo found out that he cannot even drive anymore neither a car nor a tractor. The Prefecture of Perugia, in fact, withdrew his driver's licence because they considered immoral. ...Massimo Coppo had a direct clash with the inspectors of the Vatican and with article 120 of the highway-code. The first are in control of public order within the Vatican-City, the other values the morality of the car-driver and regulates in this way the possession of the driver's licence. Let the immoral tremble, the driver's licence has been marked. Yet in Rome he arrived only to demonstrate against the declaration of heresy with which his group, the community Bethlehem Families, had been charged...... In Vatican clothed in rags:  is an heretic, let's take his driver's license. He is considered an heretic, but only because he was clothed in rags and so, like Saint Francis, he went to the Vatican. His name is Massimo Coppo and due to his firm beliefs he has been pointed at by the church.  Also the State chased him. An old rule of the highway-code explains that for having the driver's license one needs to be morally integral. A heretic is not so, the more over if consignee, as he is, of an expulsion order. Therefore the Prefecture, based on the  report of the police, took his driver's license.

Sergio Goretti bishop of Assisi

Here the text of the placard from which has originated the whole case :
( from the notification published by the Bishop of Assisi in February 1994 against the "Community Famiglie di Betlemme" and its founder Marcello Ciai )

BISHOP'S  NOTIFICATION A) This group, notwithstanding the  remarkable efforts to bring it back in the bosom of the Church, is heretic. They believe in fact to have the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel, present above all in the person of Marcello Ciai. B) It has changed residence and name.  Denominated itself  "Oriente Fumante"  to remember the covenant God had stipulated with Abraham, which the group through the spirit of Ezekiel, intended to restore in its primitive situation. Then they called themselves "Comunità dei Centoniani" for the fact that its members had to wear cloths made of 100 patches or wear sackcloths and go around barefooted to manifest the necessity that the Church has to be purified. Hence they assumed the name of "Famiglie di Betlemme" and now that of International Association of Christian Activity. C) The group various times has distinguished itself for public offence against the ecclesial hierarchy and institutions.                                                               +    Sergio  Goretti

NOTE : The editorial-staff of the IACA retains necessary, answering to those who ask explanations as to the notification of the bishop, to clarify that : 1 - The notification involves and confuses the IACA, being a NON PROFIT association and thus an institutional reality, with the “Famiglie di Betlemme”, a small monastic community of families which lives for over twenty years its prophetic vocation in the Land of Assisi.   2 - For the so-called "public offences" we do not believe that you can consider "offences" critical expressions or of disagreement on the declarations and/or behaviours of an ecclesiastic authority. 3 - It is not true that the community and Marcello Ciai believe to have the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel. For more information write directly to: bethlem@assisi-francesco.net   Here a peculiar comment: From the important Italian newspaper "La Stampa" an article signed by the famous writer Guido Ceronetti, regarding another vision preceding for a little the attempt on the Pope of 1981.   ...The breakdown between prophetism and priesthood is always inevitable. Nevertheless, turning over the pages  of the smoking prophecies of  Marcello (today about sixty, white beard, human warmth) you read, that on the first of May 1981 he had the vision of the Pope seriously ill, standing "behind a small white hospital table". Thirteen days later there was the attempt of Agcà, and it is true that the Pope, though injured, remained "on his feet".... Guido Ceronetti     Monsignor Domenico Sorrentino, one of the editors of the work entitled "Sense of divine and mistery of God in Giordano Bruno" makes an analysis which finishes with an absolutory "imagination" of the Dominican ended up on the stake in 1600: "We know - Monsignor Sorrentino writes - that the Christ,  inseparable from his Church, is however bigger than it and is operating far beyond its visible frontiers."

Request of the Papal audience....

And here is the text of Massimo Coppo's request to the Pope always dressed with sackcloth, barefoot
and fasting at Castel Gandolfo:
8/8/2001

Unfortunately the result after ten days of waiting has been negative: Massimo Coppo named Mimon lost 10 kilos of weight, but has not been received by the Pope.
And then Angela Groesser, President of the IACA, did go there. (Link to the bottom of this place)

Thus how it did continue and where persecution has arrived