In Pace Christi

Born at Troia (Foggia) on 13 June, 1923, his vocation was revealed unexpectedly. One evening, when he was fifteen years old, after the family Rosary, his mother happened to ask: “Which of you wants to be a priest?” “Without thinking, I immediately answered: Me!” He was admitted to the diocesan seminary in Troia and, in a few months, passed the middle school exams. He also completed secondary school and then studied philosophy and the first two years of theology at the regional seminary of Pius XI at Benevento.

Having applied to join the Comboni Missionaries, he was admitted to the novitiate in Florence in 1946 and finished theology at Venegono Superiore. He was ordained priest on 19 May, 1951, by Cardinal Schuster.

Fr. General assigned him to the mission of Uganda where he arrived after a year in England studying English, as was required by the Protectorate of Uganda.

Fr. Antonio was sent to West Nile where he carried out his apostolate without interruption for 54 years – until 2007. His first mission was that of Maracha. He had to learn not only the language and customs but also how to make bricks, bricklaying and carpentry. “When I arrived in Maracha, there were no more than 5,000 Christians there but now, in 1986, there are more than 50,000. I soon realised that my culture was very different from that of my people who had other human values, other customs and ethics that differed from those of Europe and Italy”.

In August of 1953, he was transferred to Ediofe (Arua), which then covered half of the territory of the entire Logbara tribe. There I understood that, besides visiting the homes, it was important to set up bush-schools to improve education, which was almost non-existent, and increase the number of catechumens. A further important development was that of the chapels, around which the Christian and social life was organised. The first chapel he built was that of Olupi.

Towards the end of 1957, Fr. Antonio was ordered to go as parish priest to Lodonga, a territory that then had (with Otumbari) almost 20,000 Catholics, a population of 80,000 and an area that extended from Sudan to the valley of the Nile, having a radius of 80Km. The Christians were almost all in the area of Otumbari, with a small number living in the direction of Lodonga, scattered among the Moslems who were the majority. He always remembered the last words of advice that Fr. Valcavi had spoken to him on his deathbed: “The Lord will love you to the same degree as you love your Africans”. “This was the driving force, the motive and the reason why I sacrificed all my life as a missionary for these Logbara people. Opportunities did present themselves for an easier life with the temptation to flee, times when it would have been right to leave, such as that of the war of 1979-1981, discouragement due to a fruitless and failed apostolate: but that priestly figure of the first missionary in Lodonga and his last words ‘The Lord will love you ...’ nailed me to the spot, without swerving to right or left, in the midst of these people who are for me my mother, my brothers and my sisters”.

After spending ten years in Africa, he returned to Italy on holiday. There he was asked to work in vocations promotion in the seminaries of the South. He soon began to visit seminaries with conferences, retreats, selling books and showing films with a missionary theme.

Then Mgr. Tarantino called him to Uganda to build the diocesan seminary at Pokea, on a hill about 3Km from the mission of Ediofe. During his six and a half years of service in the seminary, two great events occurred: the Second Vatican Council and the independence of the country from British colonialism (9 October, 1962). Then there was the revolution in the Congo, formerly called Zaire (1964). “Being on the border with Zaire, just 4Km away, we witnessed the cruel scenes of people fleeing from their country to find a hiding place in the villages of Uganda”. Things did not go any better in Uganda where, according to what Fr. Antonio wrote, “The Ugandans have been betrayed, first by the British and then by their own illegal leaders”.

When he had finished his service to the seminary, and after a short holiday in Italy, (1968), Fr. Antonio was again sent to the mission of Maracha. "It was a time of transition from the era of the pioneer to that of the deepening of the faith and the consolidation of the Church”. A start was made trying to implement the reforms of Vatican II involving everything from the liturgy to the celebration of the sacraments, Christian initiation and the catechesis of adults. People were now taught that the Church should be self-supporting, self-ministering and self-governing. People were saying: “These changes will take years and maybe our children will understand them.” Fr. Antonio concludes: “It took six months to get something done. We succeeded in forming a pastoral council and explained the work of the different members”.

“Right from my first years in mission, I was greatly struck by the women’s poverty and their condition as slaves compared to the men. Therefore, in 1969 I set up the women ‘Lay-Helpers’, to be involved in the Church and society, an example of emancipation, having a well-defined role in the Church, in the family and even in political life.”

From 1979 to 1981, Uganda suffered the terrors of a civil war that brought with it the man-hunts of the dictator Idi Amin Dada with the horrors that followed. In July, 1979, the missionaries instructed the catechists to advise the Logbara people to take refuge in nearby Congo or Sudan. More than thirty thousand people left. Fr. Antonio could only return to Maracha in December, 1980, but found nothing but devastation and desolation. When the people came to know of the Father’s arrival, they immediately started to come back. In January, 1983, Fr. Antonio opened the Catechetical Centre at Maracha.

He was transferred from Maracha to Lodonga and worked there for the period from 1987 to 1997, to carry out the material and spiritual reconstruction of the parish, badly damaged by the war. When, after six years in Sudan, the people returned to the mission, the deteriorated condition of the area was depressing. Fr. Italo Piffer worked hard distributing blankets, salt and hoes to both Moslems and Christians without distinction. Even the Basilica of Our Lady Mediatrix was in ruins. Once it was restored, the Basilica soon became a place of pilgrimage.

Seeing so many young people coming back from exile, it occurred to Fr. Antonio to provide them with a technical or vocational school to prepare them to get jobs. Opened in 1988, it was registered and approved by the minister for education as a centre for exams and a technical diploma. “More than 500 young people received diplomas and found suitable jobs.” When he left for holidays in Italy in 1997, everything was running well: the technical school, the dispensary, the kindergarten and the pastoral centre.

His next mission was that of Odravo (1997-1999), an off-shoot of the mission of Lodonga and 50 Km from Arua, with seven thousand Catholics out of a large Moslem majority. “Early in January 1997, while on my way home on holiday, I stopped in Cairo with the idea of learning more about Islam. I was already 74 years old. The other students laughed at me but I took it seriously since I had to prepare myself for dialogue with my Moslems”. Back in Uganda, Fr. Antonio founded and promoted interreligious dialogue in the diocese, the only way to unite the different faiths in tolerance and mutual respect.

At Odravo, in less than a year, a pastoral centre, the two-storied house of the Fathers and the centre for the formation of women were set up. “The well was like one of the wonders of the world. The people didn’t believe that by digging one could find water”. The mission also suffered attacks by the rebel army of Amin and Fr. Antonio was in mortal danger on more than one occasion until the elders, the government officials and Fr. Antonio began meetings with the rebels to find the way to peace, which came at last with the agreement of February, 2003. In mid-November, 1999, Fr. Antonio had to leave the mission and return to Italy for reasons of health. In 2000 he took part in the Renewal Course in Rome.

He returned to Uganda and, after a brief period at Ombaci, the bishop gave him the task of opening a new mission at Yumba, in the heart of a region inhabited by Moslems. With the spirit of a novice missionary, at the age of eighty two, he built the house of the Fathers, the school and the beautiful church of Mary, Queen of Heaven.

In 2007 he returned to Italy and the community of Troia. After a short period in our house at Castel D’Azzano, he died on 7 August, 2015, at the age of 92. After the funeral Mass, the hearse left for Troia where he was buried.

Fr. Antonio wrote some books in Logbara: “Ondreta asizori Yesu Kristo dri” on the Eucharist; three booklets on Islam, published by the Paulines in Nairobi; “History of the Church in West Nile”; “The Evolution of the catechist in West Nile”, produced by Mauro Printing Press, Troia (2003); “Si e No. Una vita per l’Uganda”, an autobiography; “Ho amato i Lobgara”, edited by Don Giovanni Mace of Lucera and published by MGF Lucera.

On the occasion of his 50^th anniversary of ordination he wrote: “I want to give glory to God and to the Holy Virgin. I want to thank my father Giuseppe and my mother Marietta for having given me life. I want to honour my Logbara people and commemorate those to whom I owe my conversion to poverty and human values; if I am the missionary I am, I owe it to them”.
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 266 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2016, pp. 90-98.