In Pace Christi

Mons. Camillo Ballin was born at Fontaniva, Padua province, in the diocese of Vicenza, on 24 June 1944. He entered the seminary of Vicenza and later, in 1963, he joined the novitiate of the Comboni Missionaries in Gozzano where, on 9 September 1965, he took temporary vows. Then he went to Venegono and, on 9 September 1968, took perpetual vows.

As to how his vocation came about, we may rely on what he said in a later interview conducted by Mary Sebastian of the parish of “Our Lady of Arabia”, in Ahmadi: “I wanted my life to make others happy. I realised that, as a teacher, I would have been able to make just a few people happy, my students and their families. This made me think of becoming a doctor but the death of a neighbour brought about a deep crisis in me. I said to myself that that family needed to be consoled and helped but, as a doctor, I would not have been able to do so … I considered which profession would allow me to be close to people in all circumstances, whether good or bad. So I decided to become a priest. I had known a Comboni priest and was attracted by his mission in Sudan and decided to be a Comboni Missionary. All these thoughts were inspired in me by God who wanted to have me close to him. The priesthood is not really a profession, as I thought when my neighbour died, but a way of belonging: belonging to Jesus”.

Camillo was ordained priest on 30 March 1969, at Castelletto sul Garda, Verona. We return to his account: “My mother died at the age of thirty five. When she was close to dying, she called the Parish Priest and asked him if she could make a vow. When he gave his permission, she said: ‘I offer my life that my three daughters may become Sisters and my son a missionary priest’. She also told my father: ‘get married again and I will take care of our children’.

Independently of each other, one after the other, my three sisters entered religious life. In 1963, I too entered the Comboni. On 30 March 1969, exactly thirty two years after the death of my mother, I was ordained priest at the Mother House of the Institute of my sisters. Two days later, on Tuesday of Holy Week, the Parish Priest called me and said: ‘Now that you are a priest I can tell you a secret I have kept for the past twenty two years’. Then he told me about my mother’s vow and added: ‘I didn’t want to tell you before as I wanted you to become a priests freely, making your own decision’. After my ordination, I insistently asked to be sent to Arabian countries. The superiors were happy with this request as they had wanted to send a young priest to the Arabian countries, but nobody volunteered”.

Fr. Camillo was sent to Damascus, in Syria, and then to Zahle, in Lebanon, to study the Arabic language (1969-1972).

Mons. Camillo – writes Fr. Claudio Lurati in his biographical notes – dedicated his life to that portion of the world that extends from the Persian Gulf to Khartoum, and it was the study of Arabic that marked his long journey many years ago in 1969. From 1972, and for eighteen more years, Fr. Camillo worked in Egypt as parish priest of St. Joseph at Zamalek (Cairo), as provincial superior and teacher. He also used that time to deepen his understanding of the Arabic language and the liturgical tradition of oriental Christendom.

He subsequently spent seven years in Sudan, in the heart of Central Africa and it was there that one of his most appreciated qualities emerged: his ability in the field of academics. He set up the Catholic Teachers Training Centre, a university programme recognised by the government train teachers of the Christian religion in schools. This work still goes on today and has a role that is fundamental for the local Christian community. From those years in Khartoum, there is a photo taken in 1993 when Fr. Camillo acted as interpreter during the encounter between Pope John Paul II and the President of the Republic Omar el-Beshir.

From 1997 to 2000, Fr. Camillo worked on a doctorate which he received from the Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, on the subject of the Mahdia and Missionaries. His research was published in the book “Il Cristo e il Mahdi” (ed. Emi, Bologna 2001).

Fr. Camillo spent the next five years in Cairo as director of Dar Comboni for Arabic Studies, a school of Arabic language and culture for personnel planning to work in the Arabian world.

In July 2005, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Kuwait. This represented for him a further audacious opening towards the discovery of the “Christianity of the Persian Gulf”, the reality of the millions of Christians who live and work in the countries of the Persian Gulf and who, with exemplary courage and freshness, live out their faith.

“The fact that he shared his whole missionary life between Sudan and Egypt – writes Fr. Manuel Augusto Lopes Ferreira in his testimony – for many of us incarnated the figure of the Comboni missionary identified with the primogenital mission of the Institute, a presence in Egypt and Sudan”.

In 2011, the borders of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions of the Gulf were revised. Mons. Ballin moved from Kuwait City to Bahrein and Bahrein, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were also entrusted to his pastoral care. In Bahrein he established very healthy relations with the civil authorities. He was granted a Bahrain citizenship and the land for the construction of a new cathedral. This was a great project to which Mons. Ballin gave much of himself and it is now at an advanced stage. However, he was not to see it completed.

The main occupation of Mons. Ballin, Fr. Lurati continues, was to visit the Christian communities living in those countries. I am convinced that, in the whole world, there are very few other ecclesial realities of such linguistic, cultural and liturgical complexity as those found in the Vicariate of Northern Arabia.

“the greatest challenge – he said in the interview – is to form a single Catholic Church while respecting the Liturgy of each community. In Kuwait Cathedral, we celebrate in five different rites: Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara, Maronite, Coptic and Latin. We must not be five catholic Churches alongside each other but just one Catholic Church. It is indeed a great challenge”.

It was during the first days of February of his year, during his visit to the communities of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, that the illness marking the last days of Mons. Ballin suddenly came to light. He returned to Italy and was admitted to Gemelli Hospital where his diagnosis left little to the imagination. Between his first and second stays in Gemelli Hospital, he spent almost a month at the Comboni Generalate in Rome. This time of forced inactivity allowed him to realise gradually that the time had come to “hand over everything”. Without a single complaint but silently and serenely he continued his journey, never showing anxiety, not even at the supreme moment.

“I found myself again with him – these are the concluding words of Fr. Manuel Augusto – this time at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, where he was admitted as an emergency. He was accompanied by serenity and trust in God, as well as the desire to return to his Vicariate. Mons. Camillo Ballin was a missionary who forged ahead, always on a knife-edge, in regrettable circumstances, with confidence in God right to the end … where his Lord was waiting for him on Easter Day, 12 April in the year 2020, the Easter of the Coronavirus”.