 | Comboni ( Daniele )
(1831-1881)
Comboni is an outstanding personality of the 19th century missionary awakening. His basic intuition that became the driving force of all his life has become today the common concern of all: European society and the whole Church are called to become much more concerned with the mission of Africa in general and of Central Africa in particular. Comboni undertook a tireless round of missionary animation all over Europe, begging for spiritual and material aid for the African missions from kings and queens, bishops and nobles, as well as from the poor and simple people. His motto was “save Africa through Africa”. Comboni had a deep trust in the capacity of the African people, who would become, he believed, the first promoters of Africa’s salvation. He became the first Catholic Bishop of Central Africa and his vision continues to live in the missionary societies he founded.
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Comboni’s life
Daniele Comboni was born at Limone sul Garda (Brescia - Italy) on 15th March 1831, into a family of poor land labourers, employed by one of the rich local land owners. Daniele’s parents, Luigi and Domenica, were extremely attached to him: he was the fourth of eight children, but the only survivor. All the others had died young, six of them in their infancy. Daniele and his parents formed a very close unit, rich in faith and human values, but poor in material things. It was this material poverty that forced Daniele on February 20, 1843, to go away to school in Verona, in the Institute founded by Fr Nicola Mazza. This Institute was founded to “welcome and educate talented poor youth of good behaviour and sound common sense.” During the years spent in Verona, Daniele discovered his calling to the priesthood. He completed his studies of Philosophy and Theology, but above all, during this period Daniele was entranced by the mission of Central Africa, drawn by the descriptions of the missionaries who returned from there to the Mazza Institute. In 1849, 6 January, in front of his superior Fr Mazza, Comboni pronounced his oath of life commitment to the cause of Central Africa’s mission.
He was ordained priest in 1854, and in 1855 he offered his service to cholera patients in Verona.
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Into the heart of Africa, with Africa in his heart
Comboni’s missionary strategy envisaged Cairo of Egypt as the missionary base for further journeys into the heart of Africa. All Comboni’s journeys into Africa started from Cairo and following the Nile River led Comboni into new African territories. These journeys constitute a chapter of missionary history on their own. Many young people have been inspired by these intrepid adventures. After each return to Italy, Comboni travelled all over Europe to keep Europeans informed and aware of the African situation.
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Comboni’s first journey to Africa (10, September, 1858).
Comboni set off for his first journey to Africa from the port of Trieste (Italy), together with five other missionaries of the Mazza Institute. He could leave Italy with the blessing of his mother Domenica, who finally told him: “Go, Daniele, and may the Lord bless you.”
Before reaching their final destination, the missionaries stopped in the Holy Land from September 9 to October 14, for a spiritual pilgrimage.
On the 14th of February 1858, after a long and perilous journey from Cairo along the river Nile, they reached the missionary station of Holy Cross. After a little more than a month, Comboni had to face the first great setback on African soil. The missionaries were not ready to adjust to the very difficult African environment, and on the 25th of March, one of Comboni’s friends, Fr Frances Oliboni, died at Holy Cross. After encountering countless unexpected tragedies, the missionaries, on the 15th of January 1859, decided to abandon Holy Cross and return to Italy. The first journey had been a disaster. But Comboni was determined in his commitment. He coined his motto: “Nigrizia o morte” (Africa or death)
In October, he was back to his village of Limone and after a short period of rest, he was back in Verona to work at the Mazza Institute.
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Comboni’s second journey to Africa (12 January 1861)
On the 12th of January 1861, Comboni was back in Africa. This time, he had been given a specific mission by Fr Mazza: in Aden Comboni had to redeem a few Africam boys (by paying the due ransom) and bring them back to Verona for their education. The spiritual, moral and intellectual formation of Africans was an important goal in Comboni’s plan, in line with his vision to save Africa through Africans. Comboni wanted to found schools for the formation of African doctors, teachers, priests and sisters in places where European helpers could survive.
On 2 February, Comboni left Aden with 7 African boys. On the 18th of March, they arrived in Verona. Comboni was named vice-rector of the Institute. Comboni traveled all over Europe to publicize his plan for Africa. On the 15th of September, 1864 he was in Rome. While praying at the tomb of St Peter in Rome, he was struck by a brilliant inspiration that led him to the drawing up of his famous “Plan for the Rebirth of Africa”, a missionary project that can be summed up in an expression which is itself the indication of his boundless trust in the human and religious capacities of the African peoples: “Save Africa through Africa.”
On the 18th of September, Comboni had the chance of presenting his written plan for Africa to Propaganda Fide and the following day to Pope Pius IX himself.
During the following months, Comboni was on the move again to make his plan known to more people in Italy, France, Germany and England.
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Comboni’s third journey to Africa (12 November 1865)
The purpose of this short journey was to study the possibility for the Mazza Institute to cooperate with the Franciscan missionaries in the mission of Central Africa. After a few months in Africa, in February Comboni was back in Italy, where he had to face another big blow: Fr Mazza had died in 1865 and the Mazza Institute withdrew its support for the African mission. Comboni was left alone. The time of carrying out his dream of founding an Institute of missionaries dedicated to Africa (which Comboni had kept in his heart for a long time) had arrived. Propaganda Fide and the Pope Pius IX himself gave full support to Comboni’s plan.
On the 1st of June 1867, Comboni founded his Institute in Verona: the Sons of the Sacred Heart, whose members were to devote themselves exclusively to the African mission. At the outset, this society was a religious institute. In 1885 this became a full-fledged religious congregation of priests and brothers. Today it bears the name of the Combonian Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, or the Verona Fathers.
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Comboni’s fourth journey to Africa (29 November 1867)
This time, Comboni set off from Marseille(France) for Cairo. With the support of the bishop of Verona, Mons Louis of Canossa, Comboni was not going to Africa alone. Three Camillian priests, three sisters the congregation of St Joseph and 16 African girls (educated in Italy) left Marseille together with him. Comboni was adamant in his idea of saving Africa through Africans. He returned to Verona and on the 7th of July he carried out another campaign of missionary formation for European Catholics in France, Germany, Austria and Italy.
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Comboni’s fifth journey to Africa (20 February 1869)
Once again Comboni set off from Marseille (France) for Cairo. For the first time he was with the first two members of his newly founded Institute. In Cairo he founded two new Missionary Institutes, one for men another for women. This was according to his plan to let Africans play an active role in the mission in Africa. Evangelize Africa through Africans. On the 15th of March, Comboni announced the rules of the two Cairo Institutes.
On the 23rd of May, he opened a new school run by African teachers.
It was in Cairo, in 1869, that many European leaders, who had gathered for the official opening of the Suez Canal, could admire the new Comboni schools where African students were taught by African teachers.
In the year 1870, Comboni had the chance of participating in the first Vatican Council as theologian of bishop Louis of Canossa, his friend and benefactor, who was a member of the Council. Comboni took this opportunity to spread his plan for Africa among the bishops at the Council. On the 18th of July, Comboni could present his plan together with a letter of recommendation by Pope Pius IX to the Council fathers.
70 bishops present at the Council signed a petition for the evangelization of Central Africa.
Due to political upheavals in Italy (unification of Italy), the Council had to be interrupted.
In 1872, Comboni established the Missionary Sisters of Verona, whose field of operation was likewise to be in Africa. He started a missionary magazine for the missionary formation of European Christians as well.
In 1872, Pius IX assigned the mission of Central Africa to the Comboni Institute and named Combine Provicar Apostolic of the mission.
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Comboni’s sixth journey to Africa (20 September 1872)
Comboni set off from Trieste on the 20th of September 1872 for Cairo. On the 26th of January, 1873, together with a few European sisters (for the first time), Comboni started a very long and particularly dangerous journey, from Cairo to Khartoum in Sudan, where he was welcomed on the 4th of May. On the 19th of June, after a further journey of 9 days, Comboni reached El-Obeid, where he made his first contacts with the local chiefs.
After establishing various mission stations, Comboni returned to Italy in 1876.
On the 12th of August 1877, Comboni was consecrated bishop in Rome.
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Comboni’s seventh journey to Africa (15 December 1877).
On the 15th of December 1877, Comboni set off from Naples with three priests, six brothers and five sisters, all members of the Comboni Institutes. In January 1878, he was in Cairo, where he reorganized the Cairo Institutes. On the 12th of April he was back to Khartoum, where he was welcomed as the new bishop of Central Africa. From Khartoum he sent messages to all European leaders for help to alleviate Sudan’s famine.
11th of May 1879 Comboni was back to Naples.
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Comboni’s eighth (and last) journey to Africa (27 November 1880).
It is Comboni’s last journey to Africa. He set out from Naples with two brothers and three sisters. On the 28th of January 1881, Comboni was already in Khartoum, from where he began the pastoral visit of all mission stations.
He fell very sick and on the 10th of October, he died in Khartoum. He was 50.
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Comboni’s legacy Comboni fulfilled to perfection the role of the missionary as the bridge between different peoples and cultures. Each of his eight missionary journeys into Africa as an evangelizer was followed by a journey into Europe as an animator, to arouse the missionary spirit of European Christians about Africa. As a tool of missionary animation he launched a missionary magazine, the first in Italy.
In many respects, Comboni is a pioneer, a man who lived ahead of his times.
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Nowadays it is an accepted principle to affirm that Jesus’ Gospel does not “abolish or destroy” existing cultures, it only “fulfils” them. Comboni was a pioneer in the field of inculturation. He had a great respect and trust in the African people. His missionary plan was based on the motto: evangelize Africa through Africans. His schools for African students run by African teachers were concrete models of his theory.
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Comboni was an enthusiastic student of African cultures and published much scientific work, particularly on African geography and ethnology.
He was not only an apostolic man; he was a learned man who made relevant learning a part of his missiology.
A “language genius” himself, Comboni was a master not only of six European languages, but he also learned Arabic and three African languages, and compiled a dictionary of the Nubian language. His institutes, therefore, learned from his rules and example, the need of fully understanding the mentality of those to whom they were sent to preach. Meanwhile, Bishop Comboni cultivated the friendship of African civil authorities, and worked effectively through them to end the widespread slave trade and its abuses.
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Comboni had a clear strategy for the missionary work in Africa.
In his “Plan for the Regeneration of Africa by Africa,” Comboni presented a strategy that engaged the whole Church and her institutions in establishing a number of educational centers all around Africa in places where the European did not succumb to the environment and the African did not become alienated from his own culture and made unfit for mission. In accordance with his Plan, Comboni founded the two Comboni Institutes in Verona (one for men that includes priests and laymen) and one for women, and then the two institutes in Cairo for African students run by African teachers.
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Comboni is rightly called a prophetic voice, proclaiming to the whole Church, especially in Europe, that the hour of salvation has come for the peoples of Africa. Though still a simple priest, he had no hesitation in approaching the First Vatican Council to petition the Bishops that every local Church be involved in the conversion of Africa.
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“Nothing can be achieved without the cross” was another of Comboni’s slogans.
The cross was an integral part of Comboni’s mission. Physical sufferings were a daily experience in Comboni’s travels: labours, unbearable climate, sickness, the deaths of several of his young fellow-missionaries, the poverty and dereliction of the population. Moral sufferings originated at times by the misunderstandings caused by Comboni’s style of life and of work, but most of the times were the fruit of false accusations, slander and damaging gossip by his adversaries. All sufferings served to drive Comboni forward. He never thought of giving up what he had taken on with such great enthusiasm. From the mission of the “Holy Cross”, Daniele wrote to his parents: “We will have to labour hard, to sweat, to die: but the thought that one sweats and dies for love of Jesus Christ and the salvation of the most abandoned souls in the world, is far too sweet for us to desist from this great enterprise.”
After witnessing the death of several of his missionary companions, Comboni, far from being discouraged, felt an interior confirmation of his decision to carry on in the mission: “O Nigrizia o morte!” ( Africa, or death).
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On October 10, 1881, only 50 years old, marked by the cross which, like a faithful and loving bride, had never left him, Comboni died in Khartoum, among his people. He was aware that his missionary work would not end with him: “I am dying”, he said, “but my work will not die.” A few months later an anti-Egypt revolution in Sudan destroyed all the work that Comboni and his missionaries had begun in Sudan. Even Comboni’s tomb was destroyed. Later, only a few relics of his body could be found and sent to Verona.
Pope Leo XIII termed his death “a great loss” but Pope John Paul II, who beatified him on March 17, 1996 and canonized him on October 5, 2003, said that “Comboni was already a witness to the flowering of a genuine African Catholic Church.”
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Comboni is rightly considered a father of Black Africa, but at the same time he is a son of Black Africa. For because of his intense love for Black Africa and his total obedience to God’s plan for Black Africa, he grew in intelligence, freedom, capacity for missionary work, and holiness. Without Black Africa, Comboni would never have been a saint or have been canonized.
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