Lanza del Vasto

Lanza del Vasto (born Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Maria Enrico Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte; 29 September 1901 – 6 January 1981) was an Italian philosopher, poet, artist, Catholic and nonviolent activist.

He was born in San Vito dei Normanni, Italy and died in Murcia, Spain.

A western disciple of Mohandas K. Gandhi, he worked for inter-religious dialogue, spiritual renewal, ecological activism and nonviolence.

His father, Don Luigi Giuseppe Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte, was Sicilian and his mother, Anne-Marie Henriette Nauts-Oedenkoven, was born in Antwerp, in Belgium.

Very early he traveled in Italy and Europe.

He entered the University of Pisa in 1922.

In December 1936, Lanza went to India, joining the movement for Indian independence led by Gandhi.

He knew of Gandhi through a book by Romain Rolland.

He spent six months with the Mahatma, then in June 1937, went to the sources of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers in the Himalayas, a famous pilgrimage site.

There he saw a vision which told him "Go back and found!"

He then returned to Europe.

In 1938, he went to Palestine, then in the midst of civil war, to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, "between two lines of tanks".

He came back to Paris at the time when the Second World War started.

He wrote some books of poetry and in 1943 published the story of his trip to India, Return to the Source, which became a huge success.

He founded the Community of the Ark in 1948 which first met with many difficulties.

In 1954, he returned to India to participate in nonviolent anti-feudal struggles with Vinoba Bhave.

In 1957, during the Algerian War, del Vasto started with other well-known people (General de Bollardière, François Mauriac, Robert Barrat, etc.) a movement of protest against torture.

He fasted for 21 days.

In 1958, he demonstrated against the nuclear power plant in Marcoule, France, which produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

In 1962 the Community of the Ark settled in Haut-Languedoc, in the south of France, at "La Borie Noble", near Lodève, in a deserted village.

In 1963, he fasted for 40 days in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, asking Pope John XXIII to stand against war - "Pour demander au Pape de prendre position contre la guerre."

In 1965 he was at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, talking about non-violence during weeks with the students.

After numbering over a hundred members in the 1970s and 1980s, some communities were closed in the 1990s due to conflicts, ageing population (under thirty members) and a lack of interest in their work and lifestyle.

In 1972, he supported the farmers of the Larzac plateau against the extension of a military base while fasting for 15 days.

In 1974 a community of the Ark settled in the Larzac in a farmhouse bought by the army.

In 1976, he participated in the demonstrations against the building of the fast breeder reactor Superphénix at Creys-Malville, Isère (France).

In January 1981, del Vasto was working to found a new community in Elche de la Sierra, in the spanish province of Albacete, when on January 5, he had a brain hemorrhage and was taken to the hospital of Ciudad Sanitaria Virgen de La Arrixaca in Murcia.

He died there on Jan 6.

Since 2000, groups are present in a few regions of France, in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Ecuador and Canada.