About us > The Founder > Introduction

Father Julio César Grassi was born in the City of Lomas de Zamora, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 14, 1956. He is the son of Tomas Osvaldo Grassi and Adelina Esther Alzúa - both deceased -, and is the third of 5 siblings: Osvaldo Tomás, Juan José, Julio César, María del Carmen and Alejandro.

Since his early childhood, Julio Cesar started to participate in the Catholic Action and at the age of 14 he became a catechist to teach the word of God to groups of children with whom he organized small courses on Christendom. Also, he showed his concern for the most needy ones and started to provide assistance to children and to the elders, the sick and the handicapped in the slums of the District of Lanús.

His vocation for the arts took him to study drama with Guillermo Ben Hassan. He also made a few attempts at essay and play writing, an activity that he resumed some years later.

After graduating from high school, he started to develop an intense activity in the District of La Matanza - from helping to finish the San Juan Bautista Chapel at Barrio Manzanares to cooperating in different chores at Sarmiento minors' institute. During his seminary in the Province of Santa Fe he continued his pastoral activities, this time among farm workers whose homes he visited on horseback.

Simultaneously, he began to study Philosophy and to work with street children in railroad and subway stations of the City of Buenos Aires as well as in different deprived suburban boroughs. He attended these places to deliver courses on Christendom and to develop sports activities seeking to integrate and contain these children. He also made great efforts to get children of people with leper to come close to their parents.

After graduating in Philosophy and Teaching and becoming a University Professor in Holy Science, Julio Cesar found his ultimate vocation and was ordained a priest in October 1987.

In addition to the different responsibilities he was entrusted with, he continued working intensely with children at risk. This led him to create Felices los Niños Foundation and to implement a huge Charitable Work to assist children and young people by providing them with protection, food, education, shelter, health care and spiritual education.

In all these years he has never abandoned his theatrical inclinations and directed many plays, some of which he wrote himself. He has also been working in the mass media - in radio programs he hosts and in the Foundation's publications with which the institution reaches its collaborators, presents its accounts and communicates its achievements and supports.

Father Grassi has an inner strength that may be defined as a "fighting spirit". It is this spirit that makes him take on challenges all the time to rescue children in need and to educate them within the Don Bosco's preventive system..

He is a worker by nature and has an iron will. Father Grassi is a "curita gaucho" (a helpful priest). With his attitudes and teachings he has made the motto he chose when ordained a priest come true: to become "a Father for those who have no Father".