Callisto Caravario

Callisto Caravario was born on 18 June 1903 in Cuorgnè, in the province of Turin, Piedmont, in northern Italy. He grew up in a Catholic environment and, as a boy, came under the influence of the Salesians of Don Bosco, whose schools and oratories were well established in the Turin region. Attracted by the Salesian combination of youth work and missionary outreach, he entered the Society of St. Francis de Sales, completed his novitiate, and made religious profession. While still in formation he asked to be sent to the foreign missions. The Salesians had opened a vicariate in southern China, and Caravario was assigned to that field.

He left Italy for China in the mid-1920s and continued his studies for the priesthood in Shanghai, where the Salesians maintained a house of formation. On 18 May 1929 he was ordained priest by Bishop Luigi Versiglia, the Salesian vicar apostolic of Shiuchow (today Shaoguan) in Guangdong province. The newly ordained missionary was then posted to the Shiuchow vicariate. There he devoted himself to catechesis, the care of rural Catholic communities, and the education of young people, despite the insecurity of a region contested by Nationalist forces, local militias, and Communist guerrilla bands. Travel by river was often the only practical means of reaching outlying stations, and it carried real risk of encounter with armed groups.

On 24 February 1930 Father Caravario accompanied Bishop Versiglia on a pastoral visit, traveling by boat with a catechist and a group of young female catechumens who were under the missionaries’ protection. On 25 February, near Litouzui on the river in Guangdong, the boat was stopped by Communist bandits. The attackers sought to seize the young women. Versiglia and Caravario refused to hand them over and placed themselves between the girls and the armed men. The two priests were taken from the boat, beaten, and shot dead on the riverbank. Witnesses and later investigations reported that the girls were not carried off, a fact attributed to the missionaries’ resistance. Caravario was twenty-six years old and had been a priest for fewer than ten months.

The bodies were recovered and brought to the mission at Shiuchow. The Holy See judged the deaths to have been martyrdom suffered in hatred of the faith. Pope John Paul II beatified Callisto Caravario and Luigi Versiglia on 15 May 1983. On 1 October 2000 the same pope canonized them among the one hundred and twenty Martyrs of China. Caravario’s feast is observed on 25 February, the day of his death; he is also remembered on 9 July with the other Chinese martyrs. He is venerated especially by the Salesian family as a model of missionary zeal and of the defense of the vulnerable.