Bishop Mazzolari – A New Biography

Father Don Bosco Onyalla, a Kenyan priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, is the author of Bishop Caesar Mazzolari – A Servant after the Heart of Jesus among South Sudanese, published by Paulines Publications Africa. The book retraces the life of the Comboni missionary who served the people and Church of South Sudan for approximately thirty years.

Father Onyalla was ordained a deacon by Bishop Mazzolari in March 2005 for the Diocese of Rumbek. After a period away from the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, he rejoined the congregation on 27 September and made his perpetual profession. He is now editor-in-chief of ACI Africa, the Catholic news service based in Nairobi.

In the book, Father Onyalla retraces the missionary journey of the Comboni bishop, whom he regards as his spiritual father. He recounts the years of his ministry in Italy and the United States and, above all, his long ministry in Sudan and later South Sudan, where Father Mazzolari arrived as a missionary in 1981. He subsequently served as provincial superior of the Comboni missionaries, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Rumbek, and finally bishop of the same diocese.

Presenting the book in Nairobi on 27 September, Father Onyalla recalled the bishop’s final days: “Bishop Mazzolari died one week after South Sudan gained independence. His final days spent among his people brought to a close 30 years of missionary service in the land that he had come to consider his home.”

South Sudan declared independence on 9 July 2011. Bishop Mazzolari died on 16 July of the same year while concelebrating Mass in Rumbek Cathedral, just days after celebrating with his people the birth of the new state.

The biography draws extensively on a long interview that Father Onyalla conducted with Bishop Mazzolari in January 2009, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

At the time, Father Onyalla was director of Good News Radio, the diocesan radio station in Rumbek, which was part of the Catholic Radio Network then operating in Sudan. The network had been promoted by the Comboni missionaries and other Church organizations engaged in pastoral and information services through radio.

For the writing of the biography, the author interviewed several missionaries—both men and women—who had worked closely with the Bishop of Rumbek and were able to provide personal testimony about his missionary ministry, spirituality, and relationship with the people of South Sudan.

José Vieira, MCCJ