In Pace Christi

Fr. Vincenzo was born at Lagosanto (Ferrara) on 5 October 1933. In 1945 he entered the diocesan seminary of Comacchio and in 1950 he joined the Comboni Institute in Verona. He was ordained deacon by Cardinal Montini, later to become Pope Saint Paul VI. In 1959, on 14 March, he was ordained priest by Mons. Giovanni Mocellini, Bishop of Comacchio, in the town of Mezzogoro where his uncle Mons. Giuseppe Turri was the parish priest. On 15 March at Lagosanto he celebrated his first Mass. In 1962 he left as a missionary for Baja California and in 1970, in Mexico, he began his work in missionary animation; after some years he devoted himself to some of the most marginalised communities of Indios.

From 1982 to 2014 he served in missionary animation in Central America: Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador, promoting missionary encounters in the parishes, courses for the formation of the young, inter-parish congresses, writing and disseminating books and missionary magazines and producing radio programmes.

He spent his final years at the A. Fiorini Centre in Castel D’Azzano (Verona) where he died on the evening of Friday 12 October at the age of 85 years. He had been suffering for some time from a tumour in his left ear and his condition had worsened in the previous week, spreading to other organs of his body.

Here is how Fr. Vincenzo describes his vocation in a personal letter of his: “I have never succeeded in finding the origin of my vocation: right from boyhood I felt attracted to the priestly life; I felt that only that would make me happy. My parents and teachers greatly encouraged me. I liked going to catechism, to the gatherings and fests celebrated in my parish. I felt happy when the priests gave me something to do. With great enthusiasm I would read the Bible they gave me for my first Holy Communion. It had many pictures that I was happy to show everyone. While I was an adolescent, I remember one day seeing in large figures the number of Christians and non-Christians in the world: there was an enormous difference and I was deeply affected. I could hear a voice inside me telling me to reduce that difference by making Jesus known. I read with great interest the magazines that the Comboni Missionaries were sending me. They helped me to discover more and more the peoples and races of the world and to love all human beings, taking no account of their differences. More than anything else, I liked to take an interest in refugees, abandoned children and the poor … I felt the desire to share their life to help improve their condition. To me, the mission in other continents was an irresistible attraction: that was my path”.

Fr. Vincenzo was a good man, meek and lovable. This gained him many friends who remembered him and enquired about him. He had a generous soul, on fire with the Spirit of Jesus and communicated his soul to those he met. He made missionary animation his reason for living, in Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Guatemala and in Salvador. He collaborated in founding Centres of Missionary Animation so that the Christians of those churches could feel the responsibility and the joy of collaborating with their poorest brothers and sisters.

Fr. Vincenzo’s missionary experience filled him with joy and contagious enthusiasm and he wrote: “I have savoured the joy of being a Missionary precisely by sharing the poverty and suffering, the insecurity, the cross and the martyrdom of those peoples who are at the very limits of every human situation. My mission: to be with them so as to grow together with them as a new Christian community which, in turn, is able to assume and carry on other missionary services beyond its frontiers, in other continents”.
(Fr. Renzo Piazza).
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 278 Suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2019, pp.104-111.