In Pace Christi

Fr. Germano Pilati concluded his earthly life at the Comboni Missionaries’ motherhouse at Verona on 24 April 2004. The last few months had been very painful: he was nourished through a feeding tube and was on oxygen, was first relegated to a wheelchair and lastly to his bed. Yet, no complaint ever crossed his lips. Only two days before his death he said to a nurse: “Enough!” but he said this word with the tone with which Jesus said, “Father, let this cup pass from me.”
Fr. Germano left us a 70 page typewritten diary. In it he describes his vocation and his missionary life seen “as a gift from God.” Everything was a gift: a very religious family, a vibrant town thanks to a saintly priest, his vocation, his going to the missions, his being spared from many dangers… “I remember, in a birds-eye view, the graces the Lord has given during my long life…” he wrote.
He was born in Pressano of Lavis, Trento, on 8 July 1917, “while the rumbling of artillery of the First World War was playing a lullaby for me, and I spent my days between home, church and school.” When he was still very young, he met Fr. Stefano Patroni who had come to town to preach a mission appeal. He saw the boy sweeping the steps of his home’s staircase and asked him if he wanted to become a missionary. Germano answered, yes. This yes so fast and spontaneous was not out of the ordinary, because the family was deeply Christian. In fact, after Germano, also his sisters Eleonora and Liliana and his brother Tarcisio joined the Comboni Family. During those years this village of 700 souls gave to the Church 17 priests and religious.
In September 1928 Germano entered the minor seminary of Trento, then under the direction of Fr. Angelo Negri. He was immediately drafted for the acting team, the choir and the group of artists who prepared the backdrops for theatre performances. He also learned to play the harmonium. The superior took him along on a Mission Appeal to help sell books. “On that day young Giuseppe Dalvit, future bishop of São Mateus, Brazil, took the bait.”
While he was in middle school Fr. Germano contracted typhoid fever and was sent home indefinitely. He couldn’t become a missionary if he was so frail. But his mother performed the miracle and, in the course of a few months, he was as good as new. God did the rest: the seminarian found a great teacher in Fr. Maurina of Nave San Rocco, who helped him prepare for the exams, so he was able to re-enter the seminary, not in Trento, but in Brescia for his fourth year.
He was a novice in Venegono and, on 17 October 1937, feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, he took his vows. The following day he moved to Verona where he attended classes at the diocesan seminary. Germano was appointed community photographer, a job that he would find very useful in the missions. He studied theology in Padova, where he was prefect of the Comboni seminarians. On 24 June 1943, he was ordained priest by Bishop Agostini of Padova, in the presence of his parents.
Since the ways to the missions were closed, in 1945 we find Fr. Germano in charge of youth in the parish of the Abby of St. Zeno in Verona. By the end of the year he was in Bologna to study English. In 1946 his superiors sent him to England where Fr. Guido De Negri told him to go to Glasgow to look for vocations.
“Looking for vocations with the little English I know? At least give me an address, a place to rely on.”
“I never went to Glasgow myself. You go, eat breakfast at the station, then find a phone booth, look for an Italian name and call: that will be your support.” In that way he filled the seminary of Sunningdale.
In May 1949, returning from a long vocational tour, he met Bro. Giovanni Battista Volpato who was painting a ceiling. The brother said: “Hey, Fr. Germano, do you know that they are sending you to Uganda?” He wrote in his diary: “Dialogue was done in that fashion, and it was better, because the Lord did it… all by himself.”
The first tour of duty in Uganda lasted 12 years. He was stationed in Anaka, Pabò, Padibe, Morulem, Kigumba, Bugungu, again in Kigumba, Morulem, Kaabong and again Morulem. These names are quick and easy to pronounce, but each one of them comes with a bundle of sufferings and joys known only to God. Sufferings, because most of them were missions to be opened or just opened with the worry to find water, dig wells, bake thousands of bricks, and then build churches, chapels, hospitals, clinics, catechumenates, housing for the missionaries, workshops for various trades… Fr. Germano had a yen for what was modern. When he reached the missions he found many confreres who were tired and worn out because of lack of rotation of personnel and of means, due to the war. Many missions were in disrepair and huts were falling apart. Fr. Germano encouraged his confreres to make bricks and build decent houses, beautiful churches that he himself painted “when we couldn’t go out because of the rain, because we could not steal time from the apostolate.”
His long journeys demanded periodic visits that could last from a few days to several weeks. He travelled on foot, by bike, motorcycle or pick up, depending on the distance. There were also heart stopping encounters with leopards, lions, buffaloes, snakes, elephants, but from all these Goliath, God always saved his little David.
In 1961 he asked to go to England to specialise in painting. Instead he was derailed into Holland as chaplain to the immigrants. Thus he learned the Dutch language and German as well, because there were Catholic immigrants from Germany. One day, the chaplain of the Spaniards had a heart attack. He sent for Fr. Germano and said to him: “Take care of my Spaniards.” “I don’t know the language,” “Learn it.” And he learned it. After 10 years he returned to Uganda. While travelling by ship around the African continent he came across a Swahili grammar. He learned Swahili too and, no sooner did he land in Africa that he found a young man who needed a priest and only knew Swahili. God is great. In order to understand people, Fr. Germano learned 12 languages. For him these were like the 12 stars that crown the Blessed Mother. In fact, back in Uganda, he learned Karimojong, his twelfth language. But now there were new dangers, not from animals, but from people, especially in the days of Idi Amin. Soldiers running away desperately in search of food were stealing everything, threatening with their rifles... The greatest joys for Fr. Germano came from the possibility of teaching to many people the Word of God and of giving out in abundance forgiveness in many baptisms, confessions, the Eucharist and the other sacraments. Fr. Germano was moved to tears every time he remembered a 9 year old girl who, in order not to interrupt the First Fridays devotion, walked for a day for God knows how many miles without even drinking a drop of water. He also remembered a soldier who showed up at a chapel on Easter Sunday fully armed and, not seeing the missionary (who was hiding because he didn’t know the man’s intentions), gave a boy an offering for Mass with a written note: “Father, I must run away and I don’t know how far I will go. Pray for me and for peace in our country.”
In 1996, at age 80, he had to leave the missions where he had spent 58 years of his priestly ministry. He deserved a rest. But his rest was to be a time of conscious suffering freely accepted in faith. After a time in Arco, where he celebrated his 60th ordination anniversary, he went to Verona at the “Centro Ammalati”, but we should say, “to be in front of the tabernacle.”
On 24 April 2004 sister death came to free him from the limitations of life and to open for him the gates of Heaven. Thus this great missionary, who without much ado did great things, quietly left us. After the funeral at the motherhouse, attended by a large number of confreres, relatives and friends, Fr. Germano was buried in the cemetery of Verona, near all those confreres with whom he had shared his missionary work.