In Pace Christi

Fr. Aldo Accorsi was born on 10 April, 1935, the son of Luigi Accorsi and Adele Macchion, the third of four children. His father, a great worker, made great sacrifices to bring the family from the country to the city. They eventually bought a house in Rovigo. “Going to the parish church – Fr. Aldo recalls in the autobiography he left us – was quite a journey all the way across the town to the Church of St. Francis. I remember once praying so fervently there that I forgot the copybooks I had just bought!”.

When war broke out the family had to go and live with their uncles. To make up for a year of school he lost (1944-1945), due to the war, Aldo attended fourth grade in the morning and fifth grade in the afternoon. He wanted to be an engineer and build bridges: he had been struck by a phrase of the archpriest who spoke of a special bridge to unite people with God. It was this thought that little by little grew in him and made him enter the seminary where he attended high school.

It was during those years that he began to feel he wanted to be a missionary. In his memoirs he describes how, in 1957, he left the seminary of Rovigo where he was about to begin the third year of theology, and joined the Combonis. He had managed to go to Padua for the National Missionary Congress where he asked to meet Fr. Antonio Todesco, then Superior General and also a native of Rovigo, the same town as himself. He told Fr. Todesco how he had been thinking of becoming a missionary for some time but failed to contact the Institute due continual tiredness.

The Comboni Institute was not the only one Fr. Aldo contacted. As a matter of fact, in order to follow his desire and make the best choice, he came to know several Institutes, even though he had health problems which surfaced periodically. Seeing his situation, the Institutes asked that he get the opinion of others who said: “unsuitable for the missionary life”. For his part, Fr. Antonio Todesco, though he knew the situation, did not withdraw his support and said he would test him, starting with six weeks spent on the mountains of Lessinia, where Aldo could regain his strength. So it was that, after the fourth year of theology, he was admitted to ordination. He was ordained at Carraia by the bishop of Lucca, on 19 September, 1959.

“I thank God – Fr. Aldo wrote – for Fr. Antonio Todesco, because I knew it was he who explained everything to my bishop of Rovigo, Mons. Mazzocco, so that I could be ordained before the novitiate since he believed it was better for me to do the novitiate while I was already a priest. In the course of the novitiate I had two Father Masters and both gave me a positive report”.

When Fr. Aldo completed the novitiate and took first vows, he received a letter of appointment to Portugal. On 13 October, 1961, after making a pilgrimage to Fatima, he set out for Faleiro, the “place where he would leave his heart”.

Unfortunately, Fr. Aldo’s life was completely conditioned by his health problems. There were periods of intense work in which he gave his all without sparing himself, marked by extreme euphoria, only to be followed by periods of unexpected and extreme exhaustion. He himself recounts: “To tell the truth, I did not need any goading to make me work but held back somewhat so as not to become exhausted and unable to work. In order to go to the most difficult area, that of the mountainous region of Tras os Montes, I had to cross four valleys up to the border with Spanish Galicia and travel a further 300 Km. … I should have taken my limits into account and just do what was necessary to keep the house going and then everything would have gone smoothly”.

In the meantime, he had been appointed to Mozambique, but, instead of preparing his departure, he continued to throw himself into the work as he always did. And each time he became exhausted due to overwork. Once, in the middle of the night, the confreres had to call an ambulance and have him taken to hospital. After two weeks he recovered quite well and was sent to Italy. “As soon as I returned to Italy I was full of euphoria as I thought my illness was all over”.

Fr. Aldo was sent to be part of the Comboni community of Thiene (Vicenza province). After an initial period of “parking”, the superior thought it best to give him a chance of a fresh start and sent him to the parishes to do Mission Appeals. Whether in snow, fog, rain or fine weather, he travelled the dioceses of Padua, Modena, Bologna, Vicenza and Belluno, searching for new commitments. All went well and he was esteemed by the confreres.

The time came when Fr. Gaetano Briani, Superior General, seeing that he was now stabilised, invited him again to prepare to leave for Mozambique. Fr. Aldo spoke happily of his imminent departure and began to collect funds for some projects in Mozambique... but he was once more hospitalised for twenty four days. The provincial, who assumed responsibility to have him leave, signing the register, told him that from then on he would no longer form part of the community of Thiene but of that of Verona, the Mother House.

He was later sent to Milano where he made contact with Mons. Rossi, the bishop of the health workers and was assigned to the maternity department of Mangiagalli hospital. There he began to hold meetings, in the Aula Magna, with all the health workers, including assistants and kitchen staff, on the occasion of the Christmas festivities, following the themes of the Council document Gaudium et Spes. With very good results.

“From 1990 onwards – he wrote – I went here and there, through highs and lows, in and out of hospital of Borgo Trento in Verona. It was not easy to find any equilibrium using medicine and I seemed to be moving from side to side like a pendulum. However, this movement gradually lessened”.

In 1994 he was civilly registered as an invalid. After that he was relatively better with regular medical check-ups and maintaining a good degree of equilibrium. He died in Verona, where he had spent 24 years, on 3 February, 2015.

We conclude this brief biography with his own words written at the end of his autobiography: “Regarding my life as a missionary under the weight of the cross of sickness, I feel I have walked the road of Calvary with Jesus and to have been a missionary. This, too, is mission, and, I would say, Mission with a capital M”.
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 266 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2016, pp. 9-15.