In Pace Christi

Father Mario Porto (5.11.1940 – 2.01.2025)

Mario was born on 5^th November 1940 in Orgiano, in the province of Vicenza. From an early age he showed a strong religious sense and a passion for music. At the age of 12, despite his family's economic difficulties, he entered the minor seminary of the Comboni missionaries in Padua. Four months later, his mother died of breast cancer. After completing middle school, he began the two-year high school. In July 1957, he passed the state entrance exam for high school. On 1^st October, he entered the novitiate in Gozzano (Novara). In April 1958, he was sent for the second year of novitiate in Sunningdale, 40 km from London, where he took his first temporary vows on 9^th September 1959. He returned to Italy to begin the scholasticate in Carraia (Lucca). In July 1961, he went to the Mother House in Verona to continue his theology courses. On 9^th September 1965, he made his perpetual profession and on 26^th June 1966, he was ordained a priest in the chapel of the Mother House in Verona.

Immediately afterwards, he was assigned to the Apostolic House of Thiene (Vicenza) as prefect and teacher. During the months of vacation, he attended courses at the music conservatories of Padua, Bologna, and Pesaro. In February 1968, he was obliged to go to Arco, on Lake Garda, for health reasons. In September, he returned to the seminary in Thiene.

Appointed to Africa – In April 1972 he received a letter of assignment to the missions of Uganda, but the process to obtain an entry visa was extremely long. He was therefore allowed to extend his stay in Italy. In June, he graduated in choral music and choir direction, and in March 1973 also in musical composition (harmony, counterpoint, and fugue) at the music conservatory in Venice.

The news was received that President Idi Amin had denied entry to Father Mario and five other confreres. On 4^th April 1973, he was informed that he was appointed to Kenya, where the first Comboni missions were going. In October 1973, Father Mario went to London, for an English course.

In August 1974, he went to Nairobi, appointed to the mission of Gaicanjiru, in the Central Province of the country, inhabited by the Kikuyu ethnic group. Before going there, he attended a Kiswahili course in Kapalapala, Tanzania. Ten months later he went to Gaicanjiru, where he discovered that the people knew little Kiswahili and decided to commit himself to learning the local language, Kikuyu.

In September 1977 he returned to Italy to follow a renewal course in Rome, at the Curia. In May 1978 he again went to Kenya and was assigned to the parish of Kariobangi, in the outskirts of the capital. On 1^st July, he was elected vice-provincial. In November, he was assigned to the mission of Saba Saba, recently opened in the central province.

At the end of the General Chapter of 1979, Father Antonio Colombo, provincial superior of Kenya, resigned, and Father Mario was elected to succeed him until 1^st July 1981, when the new provincial council was elected, led by Father Giovanni Ferracin. Father Mario returned to Italy for holidays and in September he went to Curia in Rome for a specialisation course.

In July 1982 he returned to Kenya to the community of Ongata Rongai, as a formator of postulants where he remained for five years also doing pastoral work in the local parish; he was also a member of the provincial secretariat for missionary animation and formation. In July 1987, he was transferred to the mission of Gilgil, as parish priest and superior of the Comboni community. He remained there until the end of June 1989, when he returned to Italy.

In the London Province and back to Kenya – In December he received a letter of assignment to the London Province, starting from 1^st January 1990. He went to Glasgow, Scotland, assigned to missionary animation and stayed there for two years. In January 1992, he moved to Dublin, Ireland, charged with vocations promotion.

In January 1993, he was able to return to Kenya, assigned to the community by Kariobangi. In September he was appointed superior and parish priest of the large parish. Father Alex Zanotelli was also a member of that community and was involved in the shanty town of Korogoco. Kariobangi is a place marked by violence, unemployment and lack of essential services. Here Father Mario flourished. He was in a place he had always dreamed of. The following testimony by Brother Alberto Parise offers a glimpse of what Father Mario was and did in this mission.

Brother Alberto Parise recalls

«When I arrived in Kariobangi, in the slums of Nairobi, on my first missionary assignment, Father Mario was the parish priest and superior of the community. It was a real initiation for me in a challenging context in which the Comboni community worked with a collaborative ministerial approach, according to the guidelines of the Association of Members of the Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), which focused on small Christian communities and ministries. The mission then had 76 small Christian communities, who met every week at the crossroads of the alleys between the shacks to pray, share the Word of God, and promote an incarnate and service-oriented faith. In each small Christian community, each adult took on a service towards the community or the neighborhood. These communities interacted and collaborated, with their zonal councils and coordination, and then met again at the parish level. It was a structure of great participation and vitality, accompanied by a pastoral team that included the various coordinators of the ministries present in the mission.

Father Mario was able to guide this large missionary parish with wisdom, with a flourishing catechumenate and an integral vision of mission in which the social ministry was an integral part of the parish's journey of faith. Every commitment in the social sphere had a clear pastoral slant. Father Mario was the uniting factor in this complex and articulated urban mission: he was always there as a point of reference, and you could count on him.

He organised the meetings of the pastoral team (they met every Tuesday morning) and of the parish council, the retreats for the various groups and the spaces for community prayer. He was the one who maintained contact with the local vicariate and the institutions of the local Church. He promoted the skills and initiatives of the confreres and the various pastoral agents, whom he encouraged and stimulated to put their ability and creativity into play. It was not easy to manage the richness of the presence of various pastoral agents and brothers, with strong personalities, sometimes different sensibilities and visions, so that tensions could sometimes arise, but he managed to keep the parish community of Kariobangi-Korogocho together. In those years, the insertion of Father Alex Zanotelli in Korogocho, with various other confreres who joined him for more or less long periods, brought a frontier experience that, even within the Institute, generated debate and contrasting positions, the result of different visions of mission. Although Father Mario came from a more traditional practice of mission, he was able to make room for the novelty of the experience of Korogocho. He continually promoted training workshops for the leaders of the various ministries and small Christian communities, for young people and for women, following the Comboni charism of the regeneration of Africa with Africa.

I remember him as always open and ready to learn from the experiences and innovations of others, like when the mission restructured the youth ministry on the model of the nearby parish of Kariobangi South, or when, from behind the scenes, he supported the work of the interreligious commission that worked on the path of healing and reconciliation after the Kariobangi massacre of 3^rd March 2002.

During his years of ministry in Kariobangi, Father Mario promoted or supported countless initiatives that led to the growth of the mission: the development of essential structures in the different areas of the parish (such as Huruma and Ngei); the support of the Huruma Self-help Group, which would become one of the most successful experiences of savings and credit cooperatives in Kenya, reaching a national scale of excellence (today it has 22,000 members and is among the most functional in all of Kenya). Not to mention the Watoto Wetu project, a primary school with psychosocial support for the parish orphans, and the dispensary and vocational centre for girls at risk, run by the Comboni Sisters. He wanted the clinic for malnourished mothers and children, the food program for schools, the physiotherapy program for disabled children. He supported the parish social services program, the rehabilitation program for a youth gang, on the initiative of the Ministry of Justice and Peace of the Ngei area, accompanied by Father Vicente Reig and Brother Hans Eigner, who transformed a situation of violence into one of care for the environment».

Ongata Rongai, Kapenguria and Embakasi – In December 2010, Father Mario returned to Italy for a renewal course in Rome. In June 2011, he returned to Kenya, assigned to the postulancy at the parish of Ongata Rongai, as bursar. He remained there until June 2012, when he was sent to the mission-parish of Kapenguiria, in the northwest of the country, among the Pokotethnic group.

In December 2013 he returned to Nairobi, assigned to the parish of Embakasi, on the outskirts of Nairobi, where a vocational and missionary animation centre had been opened. In January 2015, he was back in Ongata Rongai. In May he had to return to Italy for urgent health reasons.

A long illness… but carrying on working – He went to the hospital in Negrar for tests. The response was terrible: pancreatic cancer. He had an operation on 12^th June. When he was discharged, he went to the community that runs the rectory of San Tomio, in the centre of Verona. In May 2016 he accepted the appointment as superior of the community. He remained there for seven long years, during which his heart always remained tied to Africa and its people.

In November 2023, he recognised that it was best for him to go to the ‘Brother Alfredo Fiorini’ Sick Center in Castel d’Azzano, to be adequately cared for by doctors and medical staff. His health deteriorated, but he remained calm and serene. On the evening of 2^nd January 2025, he had a sudden collapse. He was immediately taken to the Borgo Roma hospital in Verona. He spent the night and the next day in the emergency room, and passed away on the evening of the 3^rd.

On 7^th January, his funeral was celebrated in the chapel of the Castel d’Azzano Center. His remains were was taken to the Alma Luce Funeral Home in Alonte, 4 km from Orgiano, so that the parishioners could visit. On the 8th, a funeral mass was celebrated in the “S. Maria Assunta” church in Orgiano. The burial then took place in the local cemetery.
(Father Franco Moretti, mccj)