In Pace Christi

Adelmo Spagnolo was born at Grossa di Gazzo, in the Province of Padua, on 29 October, 1928. He sometimes spoke of how his missionary vocation began and how he upset the plans of his parents who had four children.

Adelmo entered the diocesan seminary of Vicenza where he completed secondary school (1940-1947). Having met the Comboni Missionaries in Verona, he fell in love with the missions and in 1947 he entered the novitiate of Venegono for the first year and that of Florence for the second. He took his first vows on 9 September, 1949. As to his scholasticate, he spent a year at Venegono and was then sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States, where he was ordained priest on 30 May, 1953.

Appointed immediately to Sudan, he spent five years as formator in the minor seminary of Juba and six as parish priest and superior at Tali and Kadule. Fr. Adelmo stayed in Sudan until 1964 when he was expelled with all the other missionaries.

Having left Sudan, he went to Brossard in Canada where he was one of the pioneers of missionary and vocations promotion, travelling all over that enormous country. He informed his superiors that it was difficult to do any really useful work since Canada had nowhere to train boys who felt the missionary call. He was superior in Brossard for seven years and became a Canadian citizen.

In December 1970, Mgr. Sisto Mazzoldi, Founder of an Institute of African Brother teaching in Sudan (the Saint Martin de Porres’ Brothers), wrote from Uganda to Father General asking him with urgency to send Fr. Adelmo to help him in that work. Fr. Adelmo spent eight years with them and was also made their Superior General. He then went to Gulu where he was in charge of the youth.

In 1982, he was sent to Kenya: Fr. Adelmo and Bro. Erich Stöferle were the first two formators of the Centre for Comboni Brothers, then situated at Gilgil. He became chaplain to the Young Catholic Students and transferred to the Catholic Youth centre in Nairobi for the pastoral care of the youth. Fr. Adelmo was especially capable in working with the youth and followed a policy which was charismatic and prophetic. He had the gifts of creativity and imagination and promoted many initiatives among the youth and the laity. He surpassed himself in preparing the International Eucharistic Congress of 1985 and, among other things, organised a “pilgrimage of faith” for 1300 young people who walked 100 miles from Nakuru to Nairobi, as a sign of self-sacrifice, sharing and staying together in prayer. The chosen motto: “Youth Walking for Christ”, explains the meaning and purpose of the pilgrimage. The following year he organised an intense week of spirituality with 1600 young people from all over Kenya.

In 1988, Fr. Adelmo succeeded in opening a Youth centre called Mji wa Furaha, the City of Joy, the purpose of which was to help them know and love Christ.

In 1995 he underwent a successful heart operation, a triple bypass. In 1996, his superiors appointed him to Ethiopia, in the Vicariate of Hawassa, where he spent the final fifteen years of his life doing his pastoral work among the youth groups and in diocesan activities as well as Bible courses and retreats.

Fr. Adelmo often stressed the importance of the Catholic press. He promoted the study of the Word of God and, especially, he paved the way for a lay spirituality based on the Eucharist and Our Lady.

This spirituality also had a “sacred space”, a sort of hermitage, or Gethsemane, as he liked to call it, situated on its own location on the beautiful shores of Lake Hawassa. There he spent most of his week-ends, living the life of a real hermit, inviting both religious and laity who came also from other Vicariates, from Addis Abeba and even from abroad, to take part in prayer sessions. He contributed much to the first Synod of Hawassa.

Fr. Adelmo died on 17 November, 2010, in Addis Abeba. His funeral took place in Hawassa and showed the great place he held in the affections of so many people as a person and as a spiritual guide.

Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse, writing to the Province of Ethiopia on behalf of the General Council, remembers him as a man of great prayer who gave much of his time to contemplation and adoration; he was a man of the Word of God through his preaching, his writings, retreats, spiritual direction, Bible Study weeks, weekdays “With Jesus” and through pilgrimages; he was a man who loved the youth and the laity whom he had formed in the apostolate and to become involved in the Church; a man who loved the poor (he was “the Comboni Father who was best known to the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta”) and who followed a simple lifestyle; a man who, rather than see human weakness and limits, invited others to have confidence in the mercy of God and the conversion of the heart.