In Pace Christi

Silvestro was born in Brembilla, in the province of Bergamo, on 28^th December 1940, the youngest child of Angelo and Angela Giovanna Previtali. From an early age, he kept repeating his desire to become a priest, but his father was against him entering the seminary too early.

On 12^th July 1956, Silvio and his twenty-two-year-old brother Carlo – driving the family car – were involved in a dramatic car accident. Silvio escaped with some injuries; his brother, however, died on the spot. The death of his brother was an extremely traumatic event for Silvio and he would take a long time to process his grief. At the same time, he saw in the dramatic event a precise invitation to decide once and for all to realise his desire to become a priest.

On 4^th October 1956, Silvio entered the Sant’Alessandro Episcopal College in Bergamo, for the two-year high school, where he confided to his classmates and teachers, mostly priests, that his true desire was to become a missionary priest, hastening to add ‘comboniano’.

On 20^th September 1962, Silvio arrived at the novitiate in Florence and on 9^th September 1964, he took his first religious vows.

A month later, he entered the scholasticate in Venegono. On 9^th September 1966, he made his perpetual religious profession in the hands of Father Giuseppe Gusmini, superior of the Region of Milan. Taking advantage of the opportunity to take on a second ‘religious’ name, he chose Carlo, in memory of his dead brother. On 28^th June 1967, Bishop Clemente Gaddi ordained him a priest in the cathedral of Bergamo.

Father Silvio asked to leave immediately for the mission, but his superiors had already decided on his first service at the Institute: bursar of the scholasticate of Venegono and ‘propagandist’ (today we would say ‘missionary animator’) in the then Comboni Region of Milan. He remained in Venegono for three years.

On 27^th June 1970, he was assigned to the Delegation of Burundi. In July 1971, he arrived in Bujumbura, the capital, where he enrolled in a course in Kirundi, the local language. After completing the course, he was assigned to the mission of Butara. Silvio threw himself headlong into missionary work.

In 1974, Father Silvio moved to the mission of Mabayi, in the far northwest of the country: he immediately fitted in well with the community. In September 1976, Father Silvio was assigned to the mission of Chibitoke.

In November, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza orchestrated a coup and deposed Michombero. The situation in the country was very critical. There were also tensions between the Comboni Missionaries and their respective bishops (all Tutsis), considered not very ‘prophetic’ towards the Tutsi leadership and not inclined to raise their voices in defence of the Hutus. A few days after Easter 1977, a decree from the Ministry of the Interior expelled all the Comboni missionaries as “personae non gratae”. The reason was clear: the political authorities did not accept that all their work should benefit the Hutu population, which constituted the majority in the areas they evangelised.

Over a few hectic days, the Comboni Missionaries prepared their exodus: they left everything they had in Burundi. At dawn on 20^th April 1977, they landed in Fiumicino, but their heart remained there.

A few months later, Father Silvio was assigned to the Delegation of Malawi; he arrived in Lusaka in July 1979 and was immediately assigned to the mission of Vubwi to learn the local language. A few months later, he moved to Chadiza, where he remained until June 1987. In 1983, he was appointed member of the Provincial Secretariat of the Economy and, for a couple of years, he was also vice-provincial treasurer.

In July 1987, in agreement with his superiors, he began a year-long stay in Leeds, England, engaged in the ministry of missionary animation, also in the hope of finding friends and supporters ready to help the various initiatives of human promotion in the province of Malawi-Zambia. After a short period of vacation with his family, in July 1988 he returned to the mission but was assigned to the parish of Phalombe, in the diocese of Blantyre, in Malawi.

In July 1993, he was assigned to Lirangwe (Malawi) as parish priest. He remained there until mid-1999 when he was invited to move to Chipata. In March 2001, he returned to Italy for a vacation period, which extended until November for health reasons.

When he returned, the provincial superior, Father Luigi Casagrande, wanted to have him in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, as superior of the provincial headquarters. He remained there until April 2012, working mainly in the parish of Msamba, which was entrusted to the community of the provincial headquarters.

On 15^th July, the archbishop of Lilongwe, Monsignor Tarcisius Gervazio Ziyaye, celebrated his 25^th anniversary as a bishop, but wanted Father Silvio to join him and 7 other Malawian bishops to celebrate the two important anniversaries together. The president of the nation, Peter Mutharika, also gave prestige to the ceremony.

In September 2022, he attended the Course for the Elderly offered by the Permanent Formation Center in Rome, but in December he returned to Lilongwe, ready to throw himself into the planned initiatives for the celebrations of the 50^th anniversary of the presence of the Combon missionaries in Malawi. Wherever there was a celebration, Father Silvio could not miss it: he was the ‘elder member’ of the Comboni missionaries in the province and the people knew him, loved him and wanted to see him.

Father Silvio still had projects to complete. He wrote to his family and friends: “In my missionary history I have built 18 churches in as many villages. Not to mention schools and small schools, of which I have lost count. If the Lord keeps me healthy and determined, I want to build more.”

2024 found him still busy in Nkukwa, a small rural village on the outskirts of Lilongwe, where he was completing his ‘very last’ church and starting the construction of his ‘very last’ small school.

He would not see the church completely finished, because, the week after Easter, for the first time, he revealed to his confreres of the community that he had stomach pains. In May he went to the CAA in Brescia, Italy, and was soon taken to the Emergency Service of the Civil Hospitals of the city, where he was diagnosed with a tumour that had already spread.

At the end of May, Father Silvio was transferred to the ‘Fr. Alfredo Fiorini’ Centre in Castel d’Azzano (Verona) where he passed away on 5^th June. On the 6^th, his funeral was held in the chapel of the Centre.

The next day, as Father Silvio had explicitly requested, his remains were taken to Brembilla and placed in the crypt of the parish church, so that the fellow villagers could come and say goodbye to their beloved missionary. A funeral ceremony was held on Saturday afternoon, in a church packed to the rafters. Finally, Father Silvio was laid to rest in the chapel of the priests of the village. (Father Franco Moretti, mccj)