Fr. La Braca celebrates fifty years of missionary priesthood

Fr. Antonio La Braca
Fifty Years of Missionary Priesthood

Fr. Antonio La Braca was born in Troia in Southern Italy on December 27^th, 1937 on a Monday at 11:00 at night. The two sisters were Carmen and Evelina and his parents were Giuseppe and Assunta LaBraca. Then, post Antonio, came three younger brothers Michael, Roberto and Giovanni. John was the youngest and always sick and was the first to die. Now only Fr. Antonio and his older sister Evelina are still alive.

He was just a young boy of 12 when he entered the Comboni Seminary of Troia for two years and then went to Sulmona for 4 years and then to Florence for one year and to Carraia for two more years.

During the month of August 1959, a boyfriend of Evelina, took Antonio for a joy ride on his powerful motorcycle and with Antonio’s encouragement went too fast and had a terrible accident which left Antonio almost dead. Lots of bleeding and external, and internal injuries made some of the doctors to despair but, due to Papà Joseph’s pleas, tried their best. The doctors had given up but God the Father did not, nor did his family. After an operation of six hours Antonio stayed in the hospital for 17 days. Then he stayed six months recovering under the care of Mama Assunta and Papa Joseph. He went from a bent over adolescent to a straight back young man. That boyfriend  of Evelina became an ex-boyfriend as she married another man.

In the early part of 1960 six months later than his fellow novices he was in Gozzano, Italy and with special permission due to a shortened novitiate took his missionary vows as a Comboni Missionary on September 9^th 1961.

Antonio, now a scholastic, was off to Verona to study Theology from1961 to1965. He loved to climb mountains and he enjoyed acting a great deal. There he took his perpetual vows on St Peter Claver Day l964 and became a deacon. He was ordained a priest in Verona on June 27^th,1965 by Bishop Edward Mason, former bishop of Wau and then of El Obeid.

The young Fr. Antonio went to study cannon law in Rome from 1965 to 1970 in Rome. He became a doctor of that field. In 1971 he went  to study English in London.

Finally in 1972 Fr. La Braca left for Uganda and worked in Karamoja for nine years, doing wonderful pastoral work with a different style and was very close to the people there and stayed very close to the people there and did frequent walking safaris and started catechumenates in the villages and would visit 3 places in one day. He also ran a training center for his parish catechists. While there his mother died on the 4^th of October, 1977.

In April 1976 while Fr. Antonio was driving with Fr. Peter McGinley in Karamoja, they were shot at and Fr. Peter was hit in the feet and Fr. Antonio was shot in the shoulder. Both were bleeding and needed  help and to get to a hospital thirty kilometers away, Antonio used his feet to change the gears and control the accelerator, and Fr. Peter used his hands to steer and they got help from Fr. Ambrosoli. Fr. Peter limped till he died and Fr. Antonio still has the bullet scar.

In Uganda Fr. Antonio was stung on three different occasions was stung by scorpions. He promoted many Karamojan women in making and sewing clothes, school uniforms and founded one big technical school. In 1981 Fr. Antonio was asked to serve with Fr. Eugene Hilman and some bishops on an East African commission for East African Pastoralists.

Yet already in 1981 he was in Rome studying missiology. Then he went to Verona to promote a Center for the promotion of African Culture. At the same time he travelled all the Italian nation for four years of mission promotion and made time to teach missiology in Florence, always returning to his community in Verona.

He went to two chapters of the society, in 1969 as an expert on the Comboni Brothers and again in 1985 as a delegate of the Italian province. After the chapter he went again to Africa, this time to Cairo, Egypt and there he studied Arabic for a year and three months. While there his father died on February 4^th 1986.

Then on December 8^th, 1986 Fr. Antonio reached Wau and went to live in Lokoloko. There also he stayed close to the people and taught  them self-ministry and self- promotion and development all as Small Christian Communities. Antonio was there for eight years. This was  the time of the civil war and Fr. Antonio was arrested twice and taken to court, to an Arab court and yes, he was twice acquitted of all charges. He only walked – no car or bike or motorcycle – to all his chapels near and far. Malaria was often attacking him and more than once people thought that he had passed to the  great beyond.

In 1995 Fr. Antonio returned to Italy to Bovisio to his family, now living there near Milan and there he regained his health and eyesight  with good medical and family care.

In 1996 he was assigned to work among the Nuer in Leer in Unity State. He had a choice also to go to Boma but he chose Nuer-land. And was in Leer for two years, then Nyal and Ganyiel. He ran from rebels and armies and soldiers and slept in swamps always with the fleeing Christians. SPLA became terribly divided. Father met Tito Biel, Riak Macar and Wani Igga. For three years Fr. Antonio was the diocesan administrator for all Nuer area in South Sudan.

In 1999 he went to Old Fangak and travelled to Ayod all the way up to Akobo and all the in be tweens. He had to run many times from Tanginya. He encouraged Dr. Jill Seaman, MD to come and established a big hospital in Old Fangak  and the Combonis a parish there and Fr. Antonio was the first parish priest.

While there in 2005 Fr. Antonio felt the call to be hermit and dedicate his life to prayer and so in 2008 he spent a year as a hermit in an isolated place in Italy near the shrine of Saint Benedict.

In 2009 Fr. Antonio returned to South Sudan and in June of that year he came to establish his hermitage in Ayod. He was and is very happy and has found this life style extremely beautiful and is able to pray and meditate and in adoration is able to know the Lord better and better.

In Ayod Fr. Antonio has had a great crisis of faith which no one knows about what was going on in his soul – a dark night – except Antonio and his major superior. However his faith became stronger and stronger and that vision of the Christian God, and from Ayod to Mogok that faith has continued to grow.

So after 50 years of missionary  priesthood Fr. La Braca still feels amazed  and surprised and afraid. Amazed that God  called him; surprised that it has been so beautiful  and afraid of the expectations of God.