In Pace Christi

Fr. Mario Balzarini (08.03.1931 - 04.10.2006)
Fr. Mario Balzarini was born at Sesto Calende, a small town on the shore of Lago Maggiore in the province of Varese on 8 March 1931. As he himself used to say, when he was small he used to eat very little, even if the food was always plentiful on the Balzarini farm, including the war years. The only food he enjoyed eating was the small fish he used to catch with his brother in a lake near the house. A young fisherman called to be a fisher of men?
Mario made his first vows on 9 September 1952; he studied philosophy at Verona and theology at Venegono Superiore. He was ordained priest on 14 March 1959 in Milan.
During his novitiate in Florence he came to know Mrs. Giuseppina Camagna who was later to give him financial support for many of his mission projects, even leaving him a large sum of money in her will. He would use some of this money to build the parish church at Bala, recently begun. This is would be the third parish church built by Fr. Mario, after that of Ngeta and Alenga, an indication of his dedication to the Christian communities among the Lango people.
His was a lifetime dedication to prayer and to ministry, and the training of catechists and adults.
After his ordination to the priesthood, he helped for a short time to edit the “Nigrizia” magazine in Verona. Then, for almost three years, he was vocations promoter for Brothers at Thiene. It was at this time that he was involved in a traffic accident which could have cost him his life. He told how he was driving along a narrow mountain road flanked by ravines when a van suddenly appeared around a bend. It hit his car and flung it over the cliff, apparently into the precipice below. Miraculously, though, the car got tangled among the branches of a large tree where it stood, precariously balanced. Once Fr. Mario became aware of what had happened, he first said a prayer to Our Lady, to whom he was especially devoted, and then slowly extricated himself from the vehicle and climbed down from the tree. He then climbed the steep incline towards the road.
When the rescue services arrived, called by the driver of the van, they were amazed to see unhurt someone they expected to be dead. The driver of the van, too, was so surprised that he allowed a curse upon “priests who always come off best” to escape his lips. Fr. Mario simply attributed his narrow escape to Our Lady to whom he had turned in prayer.
When Fr. Mario arrived in Uganda in 1962, he was sent to the mission of Ngeta (Lira), among the Lango people of northern Uganda, to learn the language. It was there that he administered his first baptism on 22 November 1962. However, Fr. Mario stayed at Ngeta just a few months. In January 1963 he was sent to Alito, where the Comboni Missionary Sisters were running a clinic and a leper village. There he ministered until October 1965, when he was transferred again to Ngeta as parish priest, a post which he occupied for nineteen years, namely until February 1984. From 1984 to 1988 he was again parish priest in Alito. From 1988 to 2001 he was parish priest at Alenga. Lastly, in early 2001 he was transferred to Bala as superior of the community.
While ministering as parish priest in Ngeta, Alito and Alenga, he gave the best of himself with the heart of a pastor. He built the church at Ngeta with the help of the Comboni Brothers and his generous benefactors who held him in high regard and followed him with great affection. Wherever he went, he always worked according to his style of committed missionary who spoke little and toiled much. That was how he worked, for instance as parish priest of Alenga, on the eastern bank of the Nile, with well-planned pastoral visit to the tens of chapels and the various schools, taking care of the catechists and the families, preaching well-prepared sermons and helping to build up the people of God. As a sign of what he wanted to achieve, here, too, he left a new parish church.
When, at the beginning of 2001, he was transferred to Bala, he was very ill: he found it increasingly difficult to put into words the ideas he had in his head. This made him feel very frustrated in his priestly ministry, though he never shirked his duty but sought to carry it out in a different way, especially through the sacrament of reconciliation. He also engaged the help of the catechists and continued, though with great difficulty, to celebrate Mass and the other sacraments in chapels where Mass was celebrated in the afternoons, a time of the day he could best express himself. He endeavoured to continue with the Lango language by means of daily exercises lasting for hours at a time.
Up to the age of 75, Fr. Mario always used the motorbike to go on safari and opposed the decision of his superiors that he should go by car. He had the joy of seeing the laying of the foundation-stone of the new parish church of Bala by the Bishop of Lira, Mgr. Giuseppe Franzelli. The building was financed by his benefactors.
After his last bout of “malaria”, from which he never seemed to get over, he yielded to the pressure of his confreres and, reluctantly, entered the hospital of Lacor (Gulu). He was found to be suffering from a serious attack of bronchitis in both lungs. Despite the efforts of the doctors, the Comboni Missionary Sisters and the nurses, he worsened due to his previous illness and his condition suddenly deteriorated. He passed away on Wednesday 4 October 2006, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, at 7 a.m.
His remains were taken the same day to Bala where the waiting faithful gathered round him until late into the night, praying, singing and weeping for him as they would for a father. The following morning the first requiem Mass was offered at Bala. In the afternoon the funeral Mass was celebrated at Ngeta (Lira) by Mgr. Franzelli in the presence of Mgr. Malanda, the former Apostolic Administrator, Fr. John Peter Alenyo, vice-provincial of the Comboni Missionaries in Uganda, numerous Comboni Missionaries and diocesan priests and a great crowd of the faithful.
Fr. Mario was buried in the cemetery of Ngeta alongside other Comboni Missionaries who preceded him to the house of the Father. At Bala we will miss him very much, not simply because he was a very refined person, totally honest, an exemplary religious and zealous missionary, but also because, in his quiet way, he worked so hard.
(Fr. Alberto Anichini)
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 234 suppl. In Memoriam, aprile 2007, pp.28-32.