In Pace Christi

Bro. Angelo Zanetti  was born in the neighbourhood of San Giovanni in Valle, Verona, where the Comboni Mother House is located. His father, John Baptist, was a bricklayer and helped build the “castle” of Don Calabria, visible from the yard of the Comboni house. His mother, Maria Melchiori, was a housewife. After attending the Bartolomeo Rubele primary school, Angelo, unlike his five brothers, asked to attend the diocesan seminary as a day student. The parish priest of San Giovanni in Valle, Fr. Bonometti, detecting the signs of a religious vocation, paid his tuition, because the family was very poor. Angelo studied there until he turned 14.

During his school holidays he used to help out at the Nigrizia printing press that was located at the Mother House. At the beginning his job consisted in folding, labelling and shipping “Il Piccolo Missionario”. He liked the job, but even more he liked to mingle with the missionaries. So when he finished his secondary school, instead of continuing his studies, he was hired. He worked there for three years, up to the age of 17.

In answer to an interview, Angelo wrote: “The contact with the missionaries, their kindness and their joy for having given their lives to Jesus Christ in the missions had a great influence in my vocational choice. If they are so happy, young and old alike, it means that theirs is a beautiful life.” He discussed it with Fr. Federico Vianello, who told him that he would gladly accept him. His father asked him to talk to Don Calabria as well, who was a good friend of his. Don Calabria answered that, if Fr. Vianello had agreed, he could only go along with his judgement.

Thus it was that Angelo entered the novitiate of Venegono Superiore with the intention of becoming a brother. He took his first vows on 11 February 1930. On 23 June 1930 he took off from Brindisi on his way to Egypt and later to Sudan. He was 19. Bro. Emilio Calderola and Fr. Antonio Figini travelled with him. After a six week journey by ship, train and boat, he reached Wau, his first mission. In Wau he started a printing press: “We were printing a local newspaper much appreciated by the few people who knew how to read… Education was very important, because it opened the way to evangelisation.”

The missionary life of Bro. Angelo may be divided into two periods: South Sudan from 1930 to 1959; Uganda from 1961 to 5 August 2000, the year of his final return from the missions. What can we say about Bro. Angelo? One day he called Fr. Lorenzo Gaiga into his room and said: “Listen, the bell will soon toll for me, too, and who knows what you will write about me. I ask you in all sincerity, just as if I were on my deathbed, to say only three things. First, during these 70 years of mission life I always put all of my good will in everything I did; second, I have always loved and honoured my missionary vocation and I have never compromised it for anything else; third, the Lord has rewarded me with great joy. That’s it, and no more. Do you promise?” “I won’t promise anything, Bro. Angelo, but I will certainly mention these three points.”

Early in his missionary life Bro. Angelo, blessed with unfailing good health, used to spend most of the night studying languages. Then during the day he would work with the energy of someone who had slept like a log all night He learned to speak Swahili and English well enough to teach them, and several local languages. He had a gift for languages.. He did a little bit of everything: dug wells, built homes, schools, churches and clinics, cut lumber in the forest to make girders and roofs, started mechanics workshops, baked bricks, took care of vegetable gardens to provide healthy and plentiful food for his confreres, at any one time he was a dentist, nurse, plumber, mechanic, carpenter and farmer. He was also a great hunter “not for fun – he used to say – but out of necessity, because at times we were going hungry.” He was successful in everything he did because of his sharp mind, a lot of common sense and much enthusiasm.

Bro. Angelo loved the people and they loved him in return, often with moving tributes. “My most joyous moments were when, during a famine, I could give away the products of the farm: milk, oil, corn. But there was an even greater joy when I could entrust a team of oxen, a plough and farm tools to the young men who graduated from our farm school, so that they could start on their own. On such occasions one could see in practice the type of human promotion implemented by the missionaries in Africa.”

We cannot conclude this short sketch of Bro. Angelo’s life without saying something about his community spirit, his kindness and charity that made his belonging to a community a real blessing. To these human qualities he added a deep faith that translated into prayer, understanding, almost tenderness towards others. Truly Bro. Angelo was a real missionary Brother, the way Comboni wanted the lay people he brought along in the heart of Africa to be.

He died at the Mother House after an illness that lasted a few short weeks (bronchial pneumonia at the age of 92). He now rests in the cemetery of Verona in the section reserved to the Comboni Missionaries. From heaven, where now he enjoys the reward reserved for the good and faithful servants, may he pray for us, for the Institute, for the Church in Sudan and Uganda, places that he loved so much.