Daniel Comboni

Daniele Comboni was born on 15 March 1831 in Limone sul Garda, on Lake Garda in northern Italy, then part of the Austrian-ruled Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. He was the son of Luigi Comboni and Domenica Pace, small farmers of modest means; of their eight children only Daniele and one sister survived childhood. In 1843 he was sent to Verona to the institute founded by Father Nicola Mazza, which educated poor boys and prepared missionaries for Africa. There he completed his studies, associated his vocation with the evangelization of Central Africa, and was ordained a priest on 31 December 1854. From the outset he understood the African interior as a region little known in Europe, marked by the slave trade, and in need of a durable local church rather than only short-lived European expeditions.

In 1857 he joined a Mazza Institute expedition to the Apostolic Vicariate of Central Africa, traveling through Egypt and up the White Nile to the mission of Holy Cross among the Dinka in the southern Sudanese regions. Climate, fever, and isolation devastated the party; several companions died and the mission could not be held. Comboni himself fell seriously ill and returned to Italy in 1859. The failure convinced him that European missionaries alone could not sustain the work. In 1864, while in Rome, he drew up his Plan for the Regeneration of Africa, whose governing idea was that Africa should be regenerated by Africans: schools, seminaries, and works of charity staffed at first by Europeans should raise up African priests, religious, catechists, and Christian families to carry the faith inland. He summarized the method as Save Africa with Africa. He then spent years touring Italy and other parts of Europe to present the plan to the Holy See, bishops, and missionary societies and to gather funds and vocations.

On 1 June 1867 in Verona he founded a missionary institute for men, the Istituto delle Missioni per la Nigrizia, which became the Sons of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and is known today as the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus. In 1872 he founded a corresponding institute for women, the Pie Madri della Nigrizia, now the Comboni Missionary Sisters. In 1870 he took part in the First Vatican Council as a theologian to the Bishop of Verona and submitted a petition urging attention to the evangelization of Central Africa. In 1872 the Holy See named him Pro-Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa. In 1877 Pope Pius IX appointed him Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa; he was consecrated a bishop on 12 August 1877 as titular bishop of Claudiopolis. He took as a guiding motto Africa or death.

As vicar apostolic he made his residence at Khartoum, opened schools for boys and girls, workshops, and catechumenates, insisted on the dignity of African peoples, and denounced the slave trade in reports sent to Europe. He worked to form African catechists and to prepare the ground for a local clergy, despite wars, famine, and repeated epidemics. He continued to travel between Africa and Europe to recruit personnel and to defend the missions before church and civil authorities. Exhausted by fever and the climate, he died in Khartoum on 10 October 1881 at the age of fifty and was buried there. After the Mahdist destruction of the city his remains were later recovered and continued to be venerated in Khartoum. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 17 March 1996 and canonized him on 5 October 2003. His feast is kept on 10 October. The institutes he founded remain active in Africa and on other continents, and he is honored as a patron of the church in Sudan and of missionary work in Africa.