Brescia (Italy). On 18 October 2025, in Brescia in Lombardy, at the Church of San Cristo, the award ceremony took place for the The Cuore Amico Award, in its 35th edition, and the Carlo Marchini Award, established in 2019 for Brazilian missionaries close to the Salesian Family by the Carlo Marchini Onlus Association.
The Marchini Prize was awarded to Sister Maria Américo Rolim, Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, Provincial of Mary Help of Christians Province (BMM) of Recife, Brazil. In 1998, she collaborated with the Carlo Marchini Association for the construction of the reception center, “Chiara Palazzoli”, built inside the slum of Nova Contagem to remove minors from street life and drug trafficking.
Sister Emilia Musatti, from the Lombard Holy Family Province (ILO), formerly Vicar General of the FMA Institute, was present to receive the Award on behalf of Sister Maria. After a brief greeting from Sister Maria via video, Sister Emilia read her message with the story of past and current experience:
“I remember fondly that 1998, when Mr. Valério Manieri was visiting the Social Works of the Salesians in the city of Barbacena, Minas Gerais. At the invitation of the director, Father João Duque, he went to the house of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, where he visited for the first time a school for poor children, and in it, a social work of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. It was ‘love at first sight’. He contacted me immediately and came to the capital, Belo Horizonte, to meet me. I was Provincial then.
A year later, we inaugurated the Chiara Palazzoli Reception Center and, later, the Father Giovanni Pini Youth Center in Goiânia, Goiás. Both buildings were built by the Carlo Marchini Association, and these and other social works of Mother Mazzarello Province still receive the benefits of this Association today, also through the distance support for children and adolescents by its members.
Today, I am the Provincial in the Northeast of Brazil, the poorest region of the nation, with many children at risk and in vulnerable situations. We have managed to reach some of them, according to our possibilities, but it is comforting to see the transformation in their lives through the experience they have had in our institutions. We would like to have a social assistance project in each of the nine States that make up the Northeast of Brazil, an impossible dream due to the lack of economic means and above all of people (Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and lay people).
In the Province, we have four Social works, in which reading, music, sports, dance, computer science, Christian and citizenship formation, and Educommunication workshops are offered:
– Maria Auxiliadora Pró Menor Carente Center, on the outskirts of the cities of Petrolina, in the State of Pernambuco, with 369 children and adolescents;
– in the State of Pernambuco, in the city of Gravatá, we have the Poor Children’s Defense Work, with 290 children;
– at Fortaleza, State of Ceará, the Don Bosco Youth Center, with 73 children;
– at Penedo, State of Alagoas, Mary Help of Christians Youth Center, with 210 boys and girls.
Sister Emilia Musatti finished the reading by explaining that “these are educating communities that accompany and form children, adolescents, and young people for a dignified and hopeful future. We know that no one educates alone; life is built together.”
For this reason, with Sister Maria Américo, we want to remember and thank many lay people and many Daughters of Mary Help of Christians who respond and collaborate in the realization of dreams, of the various projects supported by the Carlo Marchini Association. Thank you very much on behalf of Sister Maria Américo and our entire great religious family, who today is celebrating this great missionary (Sister Maria Troncatti) who is defined as a peacemaker, the one who reconciled two peoples –the settlers and the Shuar – in the great country of Ecuador. And we entrust to her the journey of these two great Associations.”
During the ceremonya Valerio Manieri was also awarded recognition for his more than thirty years of constant commitment to the most disadvantaged children in Brazil. (Video)
