In Pace Christi

Fr. Alfonso Polacchini joined the Comboni Missionaries immediately after his priestly ordination in Modena in 1950. He wanted to join the Institute as a seminarian, but an uncle, who was a priest, wanted him to finish first his studies in the diocesan seminary, because he felt that the missionary vocation needed to be pondered very deeply. His brother, the diocesan priest Don Tonino, says: “We don’t know how he got his missionary vocation, but we remember that the Comboni Missionaries used to visit the seminary and speak of their missions in Africa.”
After his religious profession in 1952, he left immediately for South Sudan. His parents suffered a lot over his departure, but Fr. Alfonso was so convinced of his call that he had the strength to comfort everybody.
Having been expelled from Sudan in 1963, together with all the other missionaries because of the persecution waged by the Arabs, Fr. Alfonso worked in mission promotion in Italy. In 1967 the doors of Africa opened again and he was sent to the Republic of Central Africa from where he could assist the Sudanese refugees who had had to leave their country. He stayed there until 1972, when he returned to Italy. In 1981 he was finally able to return to South Sudan, in the areas that had been snatched from the clutches of Khartoum.
When his health began to fail, Fr. Alfonso went to Kenya, but always as a member of the province of South Sudan. In early September 2003, due to his deteriorating health on account of malaria bouts and haemorrhaging ulcers, he was taken to Italy. He went straight to the hospital of Negrar for further tests. On Christmas morning, 25 December 2003, he peacefully died in his sleep.
Fr. Alfonso was a man of prayer, always with a rosary in his hand, and was the confessor of many missionaries and Christians who treasured his ministry and his advice. Rightly his confreres called him the “restorer of souls” wounded by sin. He was also a man of great mercy, forgiveness and charity: one could have deprived him of all that he had and he would still be at peace. When he was in Raga, Sudan, he would sit under a tree and people would come along and chat with him. He was the only missionary the people would still remember even years after he had left the area.
Fr. Giovanni Battista Zanardi, who was his parish priest, says of him: “He had a very meek, friendly, peaceful and cordial character. He knew the local language well. This allowed him to converse with the people with ease. In his humility he tended to agree with others, because he thought they knew more. He detested controversy and always accepted the decisions of his superiors, thus showing his obedience and his availability to be of help. In Raga the war displaced twenty-five thousand people and Fr. Alfonso worried about them and helped them in every possible way.”
He never did outstanding things from the material point of view, did not shine for new ideas, but he loved the Africans so much that he was ready to give his life for them. He also loved his confreres. After his death, among his papers they found notebooks where he wrote the dates of birthdays and name days of the confreres and superiors with whom he had being working. On such anniversaries he used to remember them with a card and a prayer.
He was a committed missionary: he loved to visit the villages and rejoiced when he saw that, despite the hardships caused by the war and hunger, people were growing in their faith. Even when he had been away a long time from Raga, people remembered him for his goodness and because he always had a good word for everyone.
His last words were: “I love the Church, the Institute, the Africans… When will I get back to the missions?” Now he rests in the cemetery of Crevalcore, his birthplace.