In Pace Christi

On 13^th December 2023, Brother Giuseppe Menegotto returned to the Father's house. “A great Comboni Missionary and a very good person has left us”, was the comment of the confreres of ‘The Oasis’, the Comboni house used to welcome and care for the elderly and sick missionaries, in Zapopan, a city located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Brother Giuseppe had recently turned 96, having been born in Morazzone, in the diocese of Milan, on 20^th November 1927. He was exhausted: his body, worn out by suffering, was no longer able to withstand the generalised infection that had led to his hospitalisation a few days earlier.

Giuseppe had made his first religious profession on 9^th September 1947. Before being assigned to Mexico, he was sent to Thiene (Italy) as a trainer of young aspirants to the Comboni life. Brother Pepe, as some called him, also worked as a tailor, mechanic, bursar, printer and writer. He left us two books: Un Leproso Feliz, 2002, the life of Brother Josué de' Cas, and El Padre Luis, 2004, a biography of Father Luigi Ruggera, a missionary well known in Baja California Sur, for his missionary zeal and as a tireless builder of chapels and communities throughout the Californian peninsula.

He arrived in Mexico in 1950. He was part of the third group of pioneers sent to evangelise the lands of Baja California Sur (BCS), one of the 31 federal states of Mexico. In Baja California Sur, in El Triunfo, he took his final vows on 9^th September 1953.

There he gave himself body and soul to the work assigned to him. He was especially involved in the printing of Ciudad de los Niños, of which he was one of the founders, and of Ciudad de las Niñas. His dedication and service marked several generations of Southern Californians, who always remember him with great affection and today mourn his passing.

In 1986 he was elected General Assistant of the Institute and had to move to Rome, where he remained for the six years of his mandate. During this important assignment, he had the opportunity to travel to various countries around the world, visiting the Comboni missions and encouraging the brothers in their evangelisation commitments, taking a particular interest in the specific vocation of the Comboni Brothers.

In 1991, having finished his service as a member of the General Council, he returned to Mexico, mostly involved in the formation of the Brothers. He would remain in Mexico until last 13^th December 2023, when the Good Lord called him into the peace of his Kingdom.

He spent his last years in the “Oasis” Community in Zapopan, Jalisco, in the company of elderly and sick brothers. Even there, despite being elderly and ill, he continued to be a splendid example of consecration and love for the mission.

In an interview given to the magazine Esquila Misional in 2021, he confided: “Now I'm here, old and bruised, but I continue to be a missionary. I will be until the end. Do you want to know if it costs me? Here it costs me! If I could just leave, I would leave immediately. But as long as I'm here, I have to continue to be what I am: a missionary. I can offer this suffering for the good of the mission and for the love of the most needy, as did Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, who, even without moving from her convent, became the patroness of the missions.”