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Two Comboni Missionaries celebrate Golden Jubilee of Ordination
Monday, May 16, 2016
The Comboni Missionaries Franco Noventa, Italian, and Baltazar Zárate Quiroz, Mexican, celebrated their 50th anniversary of ordination on May 8 at the Comboni parish of the Miraculous Medal in Barrio Cuba, San José, Costa Rica. On this special occasion we wish the very best to our two confreres. Fr. Franco offered his missionary service in the CAR, Chad, Italy, France, and since 2006 in Costa Rica. Fr. Baltazar worked in Uganda, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and since 2005 in Costa Rica.
Fr. Baltazar Zárate Quiroz,
Mexican Comboni missionary,
since 2005 in Costa Rica.
During a half a century of priestly ministry, Fr. Franco offered his missionary service first in the mission of Obo in the CAR, then in Moïssala in Chad during the difficult days of the civil war in the early 1980s. Several times the Institute entrusted to him to formation of candidates to the Comboni missionary life in Naples, Paris and Florence. Since 2006 he has been in the parish of Barrio Cuba, in Costa Rica, a missionary situation of “reaching out” to the poorest and most abandoned in the outskirts of Costa Rica’s capital.
Fr. Baltazar was first assigned to Uganda in the days of Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Two short years later he was expelled together with other missionaries. While waiting for a mission assignment in Sudan, he went to Lebanon and then to Egypt to learn Arabic. A lengthy illness made it impossible for him to go to Sudan. After periods of time spent in Italy, Spain and Mexico, he was finally assigned to Costa Rica as a member of the first group of missionaries who worked among the Afro population of the Apostolic Vicariate of Limón. For several years he has been covering the national territory as mission promoter and through his preaching he has secured for the missions a large number of friends and benefactors.