In Pace Christi

Fr. Giuseppe Garavello was born in Pontecchio Polesine (Rovigo), in the diocese of Adria, on 23 February, 1924. He entered the seminary of Rovigo but moved to the Apostolic School of Padua from where he proceeded to Brescia and then to the novitiate of Florence where he took first vows on 7 October, 1943. He attended high school at Venegono during the war. He went to Verona for theology and then returned to Venegono where he pronounced his perpetual vows on 24 September, 1948: “willing, intelligent, active, genuinely pious, he will probably turn out well”. He was ordained priest in Milan on 11 June,1949, and was immediately sent to England to study English.

In January, 1951, he was appointed to Uganda. He first worked as a teacher at Lacor and then as parish priest of Kangole and later at Kaabong, Moroto and Naoi. To help understand the context in which Fr. Giuseppe, and many other missionaries like him, worked to bring the Gospel, we here quote a short letter he wrote in 1961, from Kangole: “Here among the Karamojong we are in the middle of the dry season: the dry wind deafens us and raises such a cloud of dust that shuts out the light of the sun. It looks like a blizzard but hot instead of cold, and instead of snow there is a fine dust that parches the throat and even the soul. Among the Karamojong there is famine. It is pitiful to go through the villages. We don’t know how they can survive and we cannot help them as we have no means to do so.

We can do nothing about such misery. At Christmas I gave First Holy Communion to a sizeable group of Karamojong. When I turned to face them with the host raised and said the Ecce Agnus Dei, I was thinking of the First Holy Communions in Italy where everyone wants to have the best clothes. Here, instead, some of them dress in black, meaning they were naked because they had not the price of a pair of shorts and I had not a penny in the cashbox. Patience. I do not feel they are lacking in modesty by coming to church like that. The Church is open to all and everyone enters just as they are. But what can we do? That is how things are. When I think of how so much is wasted in some Christian families in Italy... What happens to all that stuff that would be so great a gift and would make both ourselves and our people happy. It is very hard for me at the present moment to write a letter that people will like in Italy because, perhaps due to tiredness, I see things so realistically that some may think me pessimistic. But it is not so. Pessimism is the worst enemy of the missionary and I try to defend myself. But hunger is a painful sight. Our catechumens sleep naked on the cement floor and are happy with a handful of flour and a few beans once a day. By now they have eaten all the mice of the woods” (Nigrizia n° 3/1961 p. 6).

Except for a period of about two years he spent in Limone as a translator, Fr. Giuseppe spent his whole missionary life in Uganda from where he retired for good in 2005, for health reasons. Having been assigned first to the Rectory at Lucca, he then moved to the Ambrosoli Centre in Milan where he died on 4 November, 2015.

“He was one of the very first missionaries I met when I was sent for the first time, as a scholastic, to Karamoja for pastoral experience”. So begins the testimony of Mons. Damiano Guzzetti, Bishop of Moroto. “It was December, 1986. He was very hospitable and had a great capacity for calming things down despite the situation being tense due to the insecurity caused by cattle raids in Karamoja and ambushes on the roads. He could not say no to the poor and once I saw him take the cashbox out of his desk and empty it out in front of a poverty-stricken person who kept knocking at the door of his office. He had given him all he had and wanted him to know it. He followed a lifestyle that was very simple and essential and loved the people and his precious work of translating the Bible into Karamojong. Even today, quite a few people appreciate his translation and prefer it to the interdenominational translation that was made later. There is even a revision of his work under way to correct and reprint it.

He was one of the first to grasp the importance of circulating diocesan periodicals in Karamoja. He directed them for many years and made sure they were sent to all the parishes of the diocese that, at that time, included the whole of Karamoja. He knew the language very well and through his Etoil Yok (Our Voice) he found a way of learning the more common expressions for dialogue, those that are appreciated in conversation and are fundamental in gaining the friendship of the people.

To produce his periodicals, Fr. Giuseppe managed to set up a well-equipped printing press in Moroto. He was able to run it and keep it going despite the thousand-and-one difficulties in keeping it supplied.

He was the first to bring computers to Moroto and was able to use them with expertise even if he had never done any courses.

Fr. Giuseppe was very gifted, not only in printing and languages but was very skilful also as a carpenter, among other things. He fitted out the chapel of Comboni House, Moroto, using local wood and following his own intuitions, so much so that the confreres used to tease him as the statue of St. Joseph looked like a Chinaman and that of Our Lady was typically European; then, looking at the mahogany crucifix, they would say: ‘where on earth did you find that thing?’. On a more serious note, Fr. Giuseppe spent a lot of time in that little chapel that he had furnished and is still very much in use, practically unchanged.

In speaking of missionary hardship, he never spoke of himself but of the successes of his confreres and the Sisters who worked in that region: he was the living memory of the pioneers of Karamoja”.
Da Mccj Bulletin n. 266 suppl. In Memoriam, gennaio 2016, pp. 126-130.