Ezechiele Ramin

Ezechiele Ramin was born in Padua (in the Veneto region of Italy) in 1953, the fourth of six sons in a modest family. He studied at a Liceo classico in a Catholic school (Collegio Vescovile Gregorio Barbarigo) where he became aware of the poverty widespread throughout the world. This pushed him to join the charity Mani Tese ("Outstretched Hands"), organising several camps to collect funds in order to support small projects related to the association. There he encountered a difficult situation: the many small farmers of the area were oppressed, through both legal and illegal actions, by the local landowners. Also, the indigenous Suruí tribes had only recently been forced to become sedentary by being allocated land by the Brazilian government and were growing restless. ==Death and aftermath==

On July 24, 1985, Ramin, alongside the local trade union leader Adilio de Souza, chaired a meeting in Fazenda Catuva going against a request of caution issued by his superiors. he was attacked by seven pistoleros (hired gunmen) who shot him more than 50 times. Ivo Lorscheiter, the then-President of CNBB (the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops), took inspiration from Ramin's murder to urge the Brazilian society to work towards a deep "structural change".{{cite book The reaction to Ramin's murder by the local farmers went against his teachings: in November of the same year a landowner and his general manager were killed by the same people Ramin had been trying to help, and some days later another farm manager was shot.{{cite web In 1988, two of the men who shot Ramin – Deuzelio Goncalves Fraga and Altamiro Flauzino – were condemned to respectively 24 and 25 years' imprisonment by the Cuiabá tribunal. Others have not been identified nor arrested. Some years after Ramin's death another Comboni priest from Padua, Pietro Settin, visited the area where Ramin was murdered, discovering that Adilio de Souza, the union leader who had been with Ramin on the day of his death, had become the owner of a piece of land. Settin theorized that he might have received it in exchange for betraying Ramin. ==Other activities==

Ezechiele Ramin's main hobbies were cycling and playing football; Several of them had already been collected in a book and published. He documented his experiences through photography. ==Tributes==

Several initiatives in honour of Ezechiele Ramin are regularly held both in his native Padua and in Cacoal, mostly linked to promoting peaceful protest instead of armed revolution and to awakening the young people's awareness and interest in the missionary world. In 2005 – the twentieth anniversary of his death – he was remembered by Padua Archbishop Antonio Mattiazzo in an initiative about modern martyrs; César Chávez and Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk). In 2010 he and Sister Dorothy Stang were chosen by the Comboni missionaries in Brazil as symbols of the local people's struggle for land ownership. Besides a collection of his letters to friends and family, Lele vive (Lele Is Alive), by Paulo Lima (2005), and Ezechiele Ramin: la forza di una testimonianza (Ezechiele Ramin: the Strength of a Witness) by fellow Comboni missionary Giovanni Munari. In 1998 RAI, the Italian national television network, commissioned La casa bruciata, a TV movie inspired by his life. It was directed by Massimo Spano with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone and featured Giulio Scarpati. Two Italian Comuni named a street after "Padre Ezechiele Ramin": Padua, the city of his birth, and Padua named a nursery school after him. Again in Padua, the non-profit association Angoli di Mondo (Corners of the World) opened a public information centre, the Centro di Documentazione Ezechiele Ramin. The parish of Saint Richard of Andria in Andria (in Apulia) dedicated its meeting and recreation room to Ramin. In Brazil, in Picos (Piauí), the Angoli di Mondo association supported the building and activation of a day care centre for street children that was named after Ramin. ==Beatification cause==

The Comboni missionaries are advancing the cause for Ramin's martyrdom (and therefore his status as a beatified. He is considered a "witness of the faith".{{cite web ==References==