In Pace Christi

Bro. Aldo Benetti was born on 8 March, 1928, at Borgoricco Sant’Eufemia, in the province of Padua, into a very poor family. He was still only a child when he met a missionary and, from that moment, as he himself recounts in his Biographical Notes, he thought only of the black people, Africa and looking after the lepers. “First, I thought of becoming a doctor to treat those poor people. A person, ‘Comboni’ – especially his eyes – even though they were only printed on a holy picture, attracted me. He seemed to be telling me to follow him”.

That was how Aldo’s long missionary journey began. He had only attended school up to the third grade and, since he was already fourteen, was sent to Thiene as a Brother candidate. He found it hard to continue there as he really wanted to be a priest. He was also tempted to go to a different Institute and went to seek advice from a Jesuit at Bassano who encouraged him to persevere in his missionary vocation about which, as it happened, Aldo had no doubts. In fact, as he himself wrote, his initial missionary urge “to give myself for others, came from my family, from my mother who gave us all sorts of good example. I received much from the parish, from the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, from the catechists and from the priests”. At the age of nineteen he entered the novitiate and, in 1949, took his first vows.

When he was 23, he left for Zahle, in Lebanon, where he managed to enlarge the oratory for children and took care of the altar servers. He was then sent to Egypt, to Aswan and to Cairo where, for ten years, he served as administrator in the office of the Procure for the Missions. He came to know many people such as workers, students and professionals of many nationalities, religions and mentalities, especially Moslems and Copts. Bro Aldo always helped those who asked him and all trusted him.

In 1963, he returned to Italy where he stayed until 1978. He worked firstly with the youth, giving conferences and in vocations promotion, especially for the Brothers (in that period, 73 young men joined the Institute), and was then sent to Verona where he worked for five years as administrator of “Nigrizia” and “Piccolo Missionario”. In his fifteen years living in Italy, he wrote about a hundred articles and a score of books; at the same time, he was preparing to write “The History of Helouan”.

At long last, he was able to leave again for the mission and this he did with great joy. He had asked to go to Congo (then Zaire) together with his cousin Fr. Alessandro Benetti, but obedience appointed him to the Holy Family College at Helouan (Egypt), about thirty kilometres south of Cairo. The students of the school, except for a few Palestinians, were all Egyptian of whom one in five was Christian, almost all of them Copts, and all the rest were Moslems. Bro. Aldo was fully engaged. He was responsible for the functioning of the school and then there was the parish with many young people attending it and a medical dispensary where many poor people would come. As well as that, his superiors also made him administrator of the then region of Egypt.

He then started to study “some English, Islam and the religion of the Copts in Egypt, as well as the history of the pharaohs”.

Bro. Aldo was an optimist, and a happy person who loved to sing – and he had a good, strong voice! – especially during the liturgy which he animated with faith. He was very sensitive to the needs of the poor and the marginalised, among whom there were the street children whom he always tried to assist, even placing himself in danger to do so. He was identified with his vocation and complained that it was not until the Chapter of 1969 that the figure of the consecrated lay person was reinstated. In this respect, he was a true ground-breaker.

In his second Egyptian period, he spent seventeen years at Helouan with various responsibilities. “For this place and this community – Fr. Claudio Lurati writes in his testimony – the heart of Bro. Aldo beat in a special way. The fraternity of the small Christian community and the countless occasions to meet and dialogue with Moslems through the school, gave Bro. Aldo a great feeling of fulfilment in his vocation. The closeness of the great sites of the Pharaohs at Saqqara, Giza and Memphis only served to increase his love for historical studies.

He then served for four years, from 1999 to 2003, as bursar of the community of San Tomio in Verona. Finally, he returned to Egypt in 2003. He spent twelve years entirely in the community of Dar Comboni, again as bursar. His presence gave the guests a great sense of home and family. He looked upon those young people who attended the school of Arabic in the same positive way he had always done. And they would often entrust their needs and dreams of their lives just beginning to take shape, to the Rosaries of this elderly religious who was wearing out the tiles of the courtyard with his interminable Marian walks”.

In a booklet of 1979, produced by Fr. Lorenzo Gaiga, entitled The Rough Hands of God, we read the final part of the testimony written by Bro. Aldo: “I really must say that the vocation to be a Brother, religious and missionary, is the plan of God for me. This awareness gives me serenity, strength and courage to propose it to others, confident that I am not deceiving anyone. The Brother, consecrated to God and the poorest, has an important role in the Church due to his witness of faith lived out through works”.
Da Mccj Bulletin n.270 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2017, pp. 47-55.