Boschini was a Camillian religious who dedicated his life to the marginalised people of Milan. At the outset he encountered them in the streets: tramps, beggars, old people and prostitutes, alcoholics and drug addicts, offering them some comfort. Then he understood that this was too little and he decided to obtain for them a permanent place to go and equipped two uninhabited store rooms under the railway station. And the most intelligent, and affectionate towards him, of the Milanese defined that place as the ‘cathedral of Brother Ettore’.

From that moment onwards, for entire nights, he set himself to going down the alleys and streets of Milan, stopping at the side of every tramp in his rags and inviting him in a tender way: ‘come with me!’. And as the number of people at that shelter who were in need of specialised help increased in number, Brother Ettore also increased the number of ‘shelters’ and created new centres in various countries. He even founded one in Colombia for street children.

It was said of him that he was a ‘saint who lived contemporaneously in different epochs. He was an unarmed warrior, like the saints of the past, who went amongst the hopeless, even the most dangerous, with a smile and the strength of faith. But he was also a technological man who used a computer and a mobile phone’. Ina striking way somebody defined him in the following terms: ‘he was a mystic who was as practical as a workman’.