In Pace Christi

Fr. Antonio Giudici. On Saturday, 16 March, we celebrated Fr. Antonio’s 62^nd birthday by saying Mass with him, his close family, bishop emeritus Foresti of Brescia and the Comboni community of Brescia. We gathered around his bed in the home of his sister Maddalena and his brother-in-law Gino who, together with other relatives and many friends, had assisted and supported him during the last stages of his illness. It was a Mass of thanksgiving for Fr. Antonio’s life, his missionary vocation, the years spent in Africa and those spent in Italy, but with Africa always in his heart. Fr. Antonio was indeed big-hearted, capable of finding and then maintaining numberless of contacts and friendships, capable of involving one and all in his passion for Africa and, in particular, for children suffering from heart disease.

Fr. Antonio was known by many, thanks precisely to his personal intuition and attention that he translated into more than 200 children undergoing heart surgery in Italy. To be of assistance to them, he had to raise awareness, interest and cooperation in many people: in doctors for the operations and in numerous friends and relatives for the logistic of transporting, accommodating and assisting these young patients, not only in Italy, but also in Nairobi, Kenya.

Eventually, to make the project an African one, Fr. Antonio assisted Professor Lucio Parenzan (the surgeon who was operating on these children at the hospital in Bergamo) and Professor Antonio Zichichi (president of the “International Centre of Scientific Culture” in Geneva) in setting up in cooperation with the Nairobi Hospital a Centre specialised in heart surgery and training facilities for local staff. In this way, Fr. Antonio succeeded in creating the possibility of carrying out the required surgery for his many little patients in Nairobi, without having to rush abroad.

Fr. Antonio had to suffer a lot of incomprehension and criticism from his confreres and other people concerning his project in assisting all these children. They thought that what Fr. Antonio was doing should have been done by someone else and that this commitment prevented him from fitting in within the religious community. Fr. Antonio used to answer that “a layperson or a brother could have done what he had been or was doing in a better way, but that such a person was not around where or when was needed”. He believed that, “as Comboni has freed many people from slavery, to free young people from heart disease and untimely death was to free them from a terrible form of slavery”.

Fr. Antonio had joined the Comboni Missionaries in Crema as an adult vocation, slightly over 20, coming from Sarnico (BG). From Crema he went on to the novitiate (Sunningdale, England), taking his first vows in 1970, then on to the scholasticate, always in England (Elstree).

He had landed in Kenya in 1973, the year of his ordination. He returned to Kenya several times in between various assignments in Italy: Verona, Trent, Milan. No matter where he was working, he always managed to bring assistance to the children with heart problems. He had started in 1975 with a little girl, the daughter of a catechist in Moyale, and continued till his death, the last child assisted being one hosted by his sister in January 2002.

Towards the end of 1995 Fr. Antonio, too, had to undergo a surgery for tumour to a kidney, which had eventually to be removed. Everything seemed to have gone well and Fr. Antonio had resumed his activities in full. His time in Kenya, though, came to an end in August 2000, when his health deteriorated. Even then Fr. Antonio did not sever his ties with Africa.

In January 2001 he had confirmation that the tumour was back. Fr. Antonio wanted to die with his boots on and, except for the last three months when the disease had placed severe limitations, we believe his wish was granted.

The Mass of his last birthday was also the last Mass of his life, in thanksgiving and in oblation to God for a life spent totally for Him and for the poor – always with wide open horizons, because the ordinary barriers of life never fit him well. On Sunday evening, 17 March 2002, he entered in the peace of the Lord he loved, proclaimed and served in the Spirit of Comboni.