In Pace Christi

Fr. Costante Ferranti was born on 23 March 1931, at Orzinuovi, in the province and diocese of Brescia (Italy), into a deeply religious family. He received his first schooling in his home town.

In a text he himself wrote on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination we read: “In September 1944, I entered the Crema diocesan seminary and stayed there until I had finished secondary school. I was already 22 years old when I entered the novitiate”. His novice master there was Fr. Giovanni Giordani whom he would later meet again as his companion in the mission of Baja California.

On leaving the diocesan seminary, he entered the novitiate in Florence on 13 November 1953 and afterwards made his first profession on the feast of St. Peter Claver, as was then the custom, on 9 September 1955. He studied theology in Venegono Superiore and on 31 May 1958 he was ordained priest by the future Pope Paul VI. In July of that same year he went to Mexico City. Fr. Costante writes in his memoirs: “During the month’s holidays at home, my mother revealed my destination to me and said: Go to California; you will do well there; that is where the dollars are. I never found the dollars but such good people who made all that period a happy one and I thank God for that”. At that time he never imagined he would go to Mexico and stay there for the most of his missionary life. His first appointment was to Sahuayo, where he worked as formator in the seminary but, “fortunately – he writes – Mons. Giordani came and took me to Baja California”.

After a short period spent in Mexico City studying Spanish, in July 1961 he began his apostolate in the Apostolic Prefecture of Baja California. Wherever Fr. Costante exercised his apostolate, he always distinguished himself for the missionary zeal and enthusiasm he transmitted to the people: at Villa Insurgentes, Ciudad Constitución, Santa Rosalía, Bahía Tortugas, Guerrero Negro and lastly in La Paz. In those lands he spent his most intense years of missionary pastoral service, visiting the farms and small villages of the parishes where there were no large Christian communities. He showed himself to be a very dedicated missionary, a man of prayer and total consecration to his ministry. Like all his companions, his style of life was one of poverty and great simplicity, in harmony with the experience and the situations of the people he was serving.

During his stay in Mexico, after some years of evangelising and pastoral work, he was appointed mission promoter at the seminary of Guadalajara (1970-1974), which was still under construction and in its beginnings, with a fine group of young aspirants to the missionary and Comboni life. There, too, he showed himself to be enthusiastic and a great worker and, as in other places, as having a great creative spirit: he formed new “Comboni Missionary Damas” groups made up of benefactors in various villages in the states of Jalisco and Colima. The basic activity of these groups was to promote the missionary spirit in their parishes, distributing Esquila Misional and Aguiluchos, and providing material support for the activities of our seminary.

Later on, after a number of years of service to the province of Mexico, was recalled to Italy where he dedicated himself to mission and pastoral ministry. From 1978 to 1988 he coordinated the ministry of mission promotion first in Sulmona and then in the community of Troia, in Italy.

During his last period in Baja California, from 1991 to November 1999, he again succeeded in working in pastoral ministry in various parishes in which he had begun his ministry. In 1991 he was parish priest in Ciudad Insurgentes, in Valle di Santo Domingo, in the midst of a congregation of small farmers who were experiencing difficulties related to the countryside and the agricultural crisis in that area. In 1997 he assumed responsibility as parish priest of the Christian community of Guerrero Negro, in the north of the peninsula, taking care of the workers in the great salt marsh of the Valle del Vizcaino and, finally, of the parish of Sagrado Corazón in La Paz, where he spent the last months of his ministry in Baja California.

He was forced by illness to return to Italy, this time for good. Fr. Costante writes: “My motherland, Italy, welcomes me, in September 1999, as I rest and animate the people at the sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima in the diocese of Milan. To sum up, I must admit that my missionary life has always found its energy in the shadow of Our Lady. I began at the quiet, small and remote sanctuary of Maria Auxiliadora. I then moved to that of Fatima, the first church I built. I continued in Troia under the gaze of Our Lady Mediatrix. In Guerrero, Our Lady of Guadalupe was a mother to me. And now I am in Milan, in the arms of Our Lady of Fatima. To her I offer my thanks”.

For almost a year he received treatment at the Milan Centre for Sick Confreres. From July 2000 to December 2004 he was in charge of the Rectory dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the community of the Milan Centre. For around 14 years, from 2005 to 2018, he offered his priestly ministry there. In 2018 he fell sick and stayed at the Ambrosoli Centre until his death on 24 March 2020.
(Fr. Enrique Sánchez González, mccj)