Lanza del Vasto

Lanza del Vasto (born Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Maria Enrico Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte; 29 September 1901 – 5 January 1981) was an Italian poet and nonviolent activist.

Youth in Italy His father, Don Luigi Giuseppe Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte, was Sicilian and his mother, Anne-Marie Henriette Nauts-Oedenkoven,

Nonviolent activism 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 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.

Left to right, Jean-Marie Muller, Lanza del Vasto, Jacques de la Bollardière on the Larzac during the struggle against the military camp extension. 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).

Death 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 5 January, he had a brain hemorrhage and was taken to the hospital of Ciudad Sanitaria Virgen de La Arrixaca in Murcia. He died there on 6 Jan.