In Pace Christi

Fr. Luigi was born at Palù di Giovo (province of Trent) on 7 July 1942. He entered the Gozzano novitiate and too first vows on 9 September 1966. He went to Venegono to do the scholasticate and there took final vows on 9 September 1969. He was ordained a priest on 21 March 1970 and was sent to Paris to study French. In 1971, he was assigned to the Congo where he spent more than thirty years of missionary life.

The bishops of the dioceses of Dungu-Doruma, Wamba and Bondo had more than once expressed their desire to gain the collaboration of the Combonis. Consequently, in July 1971, Fr. Alessandro Benetti became the first Comboni to be sent to the parish of Bamokandi. The parish was officially opened on the feast of the Assumption. Fr. Luigi Moser arrived in November and, in February 1972, Fr. Giovanni Trivella followed, in July, by Bro. Giovanni Cattaneo. The community lived in two mud huts. The chapel was a large brick shed. When the rains were rather heavy, water leaked in everywhere.

In 1973, the missionaries chose a more central place, higher up and healthier and began to build the presbytery, the parish office and the catechumenate. They decided not to start building the church since, as Fr, Trivella said, “It was only right that the Christians should show they really wanted it and were ready to cooperate”. On the night of Holy Saturday, after sufficient preparation, Fr. Luigi Moser introduced, for the first time, dancing during the ceremony of the blessing of the Paschal Candle. In 1974, the superiors sent Fr. Luigi to Paris for specialised studies in the department of Ethnomusicology of the Sorbonne.

In November 1976, Fr. Luigi was sent to Nangazizi as curate of the parish where he was of great help at the catechetical centre in the field of musical and liturgical education. At the end of 1983, he took on the mission of St. Mbaga, a large parish in the outskirts of Kinshasa. He was appointed parish priest at Easter 1984.

In 1993, he was called to Italy to serve in the mass media. He was in charge of Comboni audio-visuals, FATMO (open window on the third world), a member of the Nigrizia team in Verona and engaged in missionary animation through the 256 Italian Catholic radio stations and TV.

Once again in the Congo, he was media head and director in the diocese of Kinshasa: diocesan media commission, radio director, coordinator of the planned TV and founder and director of the school of liturgical music. All the while, he worked constantly in the apostolate. In 2010, the local mafia, for reasons of money, made his life impossible. He therefore left the Congo and, in 2012, after a year of missionary animation in his home territory of Trent, he left once again to embark upon a new missionary adventure in Chad where he was pastorally responsible for a large part of the southern outskirts of N’Djamena. Every Saturday, he celebrated Mass in the prison of the capital (with 3,000 prisoners of whom 10% were Catholics), and also produced educational videos for the small farmers, the local health service and missionary animation in Chad.

During his fifty years in the mission, Fr. Luigi established or completely restructured 3 radio and one TV station: Radio Boboto (Peace) in Isiro, at the spot where Fr. Remo Armani, a Comboni missionary from Trent,  was killed by the Simba on 24 November 1964; a radio station and the new TV station Elikya (Hope), in Kinshasa and, in 2012, in Chad where, again with the support of the province of Trento, he completely restructured the Arc en Ciel (Rainbow) radio station and the mass media centre of the diocese of Ndjamena.

Fr. Luigi died following an operation at N’Djamena hospital on 22 November 2021.