In Pace Christi

Father Padre Victor Manuel Tavares Dias (18.04.1960 – 21.03.2025)

Victor Manuel Tavares Dias was born on 18^th April 1960 in Arcozelo das Maias, diocese of Viseu, Portugal, the second of three brothers, sons of Abel Jorge Dias and de Ester Tavares de Jesus. His parents ran a grocery store, which also housed a post office and a public telephone. The Comboni missionaries, who arrived in Portugal in 1947, with the opening of the minor seminary in Viseu, also used the store. They also opened a house in Arcozelo, on the banks of the Vouga River, used for the seminarians’ summer holidays. Victor was often with them and was fascinated by them. So much so that, in 1970, he asked to enter the minor seminary in Viseu, where he attended middle school and the two-year high school period, then going to Maia for the three-year high school period, crowned by the classical high school exam, and finally in the postulate of Coimbra for philosophy. In September 1979, Victor began the two-year novitiate in Santarém. At the end of the two-year period, the evaluation of the formators was completely positive: “His identification with the Comboni missionary vocation has grown and today Victor lives it with joy and serenity. His ability to weave personal relationships of friendship with others is good, and this facilitates his insertion into community life”. On 6^th June 1981 he made his first religious profession.

For his theological studies, Victor was assigned to the scholasticate of Elstree in England. For a few months he studied English, also earning the Certificate in English from the University of Cambridge in June 1982. For the theology courses he attended the Mission Institute of London, where in June 1985 he obtained the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology and a Masters in Humanistic Sciences, awarded by the University of Louvain.

According to the formators and his scholasticate companions, “the qualities of his personality have grown; Victor is communicative, open to dialogue, attentive to people, calm and serene, faithful to his convictions, endowed with a strong sense of creativity and humour.” They recognise in him “a marked tendency to be emotional, very sensitive in relation to people and events,” and therefore recommend him “not to let himself be carried away by emotions.” Victor made his perpetual profession on 8^th December 1984. On 13^th February 1985, he was ordained deacon in the church of St. Paul the Apostle in Wood Green, a neighbourhood located in the north of London, by Mgr. Patrick Augustine Kalilombe (M. Afr.), Bishop of Lilongwe (Malawi). His priestly ordination took place on 14^th July 1985 in the parish church of Arcozelo das Maias, by the Bishop of Viseu, Mgr. José Pedro da Silva. Destined for Portugal, the provincial superior assigned him to the community of Santarém as the person in charge of missionary animation. From the very beginning, Father Victor managed to gain the friendship of the bishop and the clergy. The initiatives he was able to propose and the valid ministerial help he offered to the parish priests led to the birth of a relationship of friendship and mutual appreciation. In the missionary animation activities, he involved the novices and a team of lay men and women, who supported him in his visits to the parishes, bringing a clear evangelical message and a splendid evangelising testimony, both on Sundays and in the missionary triduums and weeks.

At a certain point, Father Victor was appointed superior of the local community. This new responsibility also led him to take an interest in the formation of Comboni candidates, with close contact with the formators, with whom he discussed, reflected, evaluated, examined and questioned, always respecting those who had received the task of forming the novices. This helped him to gain a valuable wealth of experience that would prove decisive later in his missionary life.

In July 1992, Father Victor was assigned to the Philippines. Shortly afterwards he joined the first group of Comboni Missionaries who arrived in Quezon City, Metro Manila, in January 1988, beginning the missionary activity of the Institute in Asia. He was assigned to missionary animation. This stage marked his entire missionary life, in the sense that, from now on, periods spent in the Philippines would alternate with periods spent in Portugal, as a missionary animation officer or engaged in formation in a novitiate or postulancy. He maintained a lifelong and deep nostalgia for Africa and the ministry of direct evangelisation. This, after all, was his first choice made on the eve of his perpetual vows, in which he asked to be able to work in Sudan or Ethiopia. This longing for Africa, however, did not divide his soul, nor affect his will to do what he could and must do. He threw himself with all his energy and enthusiasm into missionary animation in the Philippines, immediately nurturing feelings of great sympathy and sincere appreciation towards the people – children, young people, adults – and forming numerous bonds of friendship with many people. The experience he had in Santarém was useful to him. He sought and found opportunities to meet priests, parish priests, curates, religious and lay people, and to make friends with them. He visited the parishes, always bringing with him the seminarians of the Saint Daniel Comboni Seminary. He maintained and took care of correspondence with friends and benefactors, old and new. For them he created a newsletter, Friends of the Mission, which he distributed – always together with the World Mission magazine published in the delegation – as a simple but effective tool for missionary animation. To revive their missionary spirit and commitment, he organised periodical gatherings for them, called Feasts of Friends of the Mission.

In 1997, Father Victor asked for a break to take care of his personal formation. He participated in the Comboni Year of Ongoing Formation (ACFP), which was held in Mexico City from October 1996 to June 1997. The experience enriched him because of his appreciation of the Latin American cultural world, and Mexican in particular. Renewed by this experience, Father Victor returned to Manila, where he remained until the end of 2000, again involved in missionary animation.

In January 2001, the major superiors in Rome were looking for possible formators for the formation houses around the world. Sifting through the folders containing documents regarding young Comboni missionaries who had already had missionary experience, they came across that of Father Victor. Inside was the report made his by the formators of the Elstree scholasticate and they read: “We warmly recommend him for further studies and future commitments in the sector of basic formation.” The letter of appointment was sent out and Father Victor had to hurry to Rome, assigned to the community of student confreres at the Curia. He immediately enrolled at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Formators in Seminaries and the Congregation for Catholic Education, at the Pontifical Gregorian University. At the end of August 2002, he finished the first series of courses and went to the novitiate in Santarém, where he was appointed superior, in charge of missionary animation. At the end of June 2003, he returned to Rome to continue his courses at the Interdisciplinary Centre. At the end of June 2004, he had attended four semesters (2 years) as an ordinary student at the Institute of Spirituality and a third year outside the course for the Licentiate, and obtained both the Diploma for Formators in Seminaries (2003) and the Licentiate in Formation and Spirituality (2004), both with the grade ‘summa cum laude’. After three months holidays spent with his family, at the beginning of September he went to the postulancy-novitiate of Quezon City, first as a formator of postulants, then as father master of novices. On 1^st June 2005, he was elected vice-superior of the Asian delegation. He was immediately appointed secretary of the delegation for vocation promotion and formation. He remained in the postulancy-novitiate of Quezon City until October 2009 a year he spent in the shadow of the cross: he suffered a serious nervous breakdown that forced him to return to Portugal for medical treatment. In a new assignment letter dated 16^th December 2009, the superior general, Father Enrique Sanchéz González, assigned him to the province of Portugal. After the moment of crisis, in January 2011 Father Victor was assigned to the community of Santarém as local superior. In August 2012, he was appointed socius father master of the novitiate. In January 2014 he was elected provincial councillor and chosen by the councillors as vice provincial superior. In July he was appointed provincial coordinator of ongoing formation. In short, he returned to being what he had always been and to doing what he knew how to do so well: animating formation and missionary animation, and enlivening the life of the community and the entire province.

But it also appears clear that the passing years marked by exhaustion left their mark. However, he was still eager to return to the Philippines. And in June 2019, he was again in Quezon City as a father master of novices. In March 2022, however, he again fell into a state of depression and was forced to return to Portugal to recover.

Father Victor will never return to his beloved Manila. In fact, a particularly difficult and painful period then commenced which he spent in the Comboni community of Viseu, surrounded by the love of his brothers and cared for by a doctor. He never lost his usual smile or good humour, even if though his face betrayed a sense of suffering for the limitations he experienced that limited his relationships with others and forced him to wonder about the dreams he still carried in his heart.

Sister Death approached in a surprising way. On Saturday, 15^th March 2025, Father Victor went to the hospital in Viseu to visit his mother Ester, 93 years old, who was hospitalised due to her failing health. On his way home, he confided to the confrere who accompanied him that he felt extremely tired and had a bad headache. However, he managed to spend the night peacefully. In the morning, during the recitation of Lauds, he feels a bit unwell but seemed to recover immediately. At lunch, he was the same Victor as always, and the confreres chatted with him as usual. He then retired to his room to rest. He went to the bathroom to wash his hands and brush his teeth and there he suffered a heart attack. In falling, he struck his head on the floor. The fall caused a massive cerebral hematoma. The emergency services were called immediately. After the necessary efforts at resuscitation, Father Victor recovered his breathing and his heart started beating again. Immediately afterward, he entered a deep coma. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was cared for for 72 hours. The tests left no sign of hope: he no longer responded. On the 20th, brain death occurred, and Father Victor was taken to the Central Hospital of Coimbra for organ transplantation. The body was handed over on Saturday the 22^nd. Father Victor’s brothers, Giorgio and Abele, asked that the funeral be celebrated on Sunday the 23^rd. The Eucharist was celebrated in the chapel of the house in Viseu, presided over by Father Fernando Domingues, provincial superior. At 3:30 p.m., the funeral was celebrated in the parish church of Arcozelo das Maias, packed with people, including many friends who had come from various parts, particularly from Santarém, and confreres and diocesan priests. The ceremony was a tribute of faith, tinged with sadness and heartache, given to a priest and Comboni missionary who, with his smile and friendship, brought the joy of the Gospel and Christian life into the lives of so many people.

(Father Manuel Augusto Lopes Ferreira, mccj)