In Pace Christi

Fr. Umberto Parizzi was born in Brescia, Italy, on 1 May, 1932, the son of Primo Parizzi and Antonietta nee Scolini. A product of the Comboni apostolic school at Brescia, he joined the novitiate of Gozzano where he took first vows on 9 September, 1951. He did his scholasticate in Verona, at the Mother House, in Pesaro, in Spain and lastly in Venegono, taking perpetual vows on 9 September, 1957.

He was ordained priest in Milano on 31 May, 1958, and immediately moved, as vocations promoter, to the community of Trent; He was vice-rector and formator at the apostolic school of Rebbio from July 1959 to June 1962.

He was assigned to Mexico and worked there from 1963 to 2007, with an interval of three years in Spain and in Italy. Of the 41 years he lived in Mexico, he spent most of them in Southern California.

When he arrived in the province in late 1962, he was appointed to the Parish of Todos Santos, now in the diocese of La Paz, and stayed there as curate until 1963 when he was sent to the apostolic school of St. Francisco del Rincón, Guanajuat, then under construction, first as spiritual director and then, from 1964 to 1965, as superior of the community.

The seminary was meant to house more than a hundred seminarians, both candidates for the priesthood and the brotherhood. Fr. Parizzi, being well aware of the implications, wrote to the Provincial: “With such a building to put up, here at San. Francisco, there is no room for over spending. We really have to be economical, even ‘to the bone’, as Quintino Sella would say”.

He later went back to the city of La Paz, as vice-rector of the diocesan seminary, from 1965 to 1968, and in charge of the parish of O. L of Lourdes at Villa Constitución (now Ciudad Constitución) in the diocese of La Paz, until 1971. In his letters to the provincial of the time, Fr. Gianpiero Pini, we can understand the commitments of the community: building chapels, the desire to grow in faith, to exercise solidarity and charity by means of financial aid to other communities and groups.

He founded the newsletter “The Unknown Soldier”, which he took very personally, as a means of promotion and contacts with friends, relatives, parishioners and benefactors.

In 1979, assigned to Spain, we find him engaged in vocations promotion in Barcelona, even though he had expressed in a letter how hard he found it to fit in with this service but also his desire to do the work as best he could. He worked in Italy from 1980 al 1983, especially in Verona, in mission promotion. At heart, he really wanted to go back to the Mexican Province and was always overjoyed to meet any missionaries from Mexico passing through the Mother House.

He was again appointed to Mexico in 1983, by the Superior general, Fr. Salvatore Calvia.

That same year he arrived in Ciudad Constitución, BCS. He went to Bahía Tortugas, in La Paz, to the parish of St. Martín de Porres, afterwards handed over to the diocese; he worked in Bahía Tortugas, from 1990 to 2007.

On 17 March, 1996, he took part in the beatification of Comboni, in Rome, in St. Peter’s Square, and at the thanksgiving Masses ay Limone sul Garda, in the Cathedral of Brescia and in the Mother House in Verona.

While in Italy, he took part in the Renewal course and returned to Mexico in 2008 to celebrate his Golden Jubilee of priesthood – at the parish of Asunción, Bahía Tortugas –and on 1 July of the same year, he was assigned to the community attached to the parish of Ciudad Constitución, a place he never reached. He had to return to Brescia for health reasons and remained there until he died on 2 September, 2016.
(Fr. Erasmo Norberto Bautista Lucas, mccj).
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 270 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2017,  pp. 115-119.