Pietro Berno

Pietro Berno (also called Peter Berno or Pedro Berno) was a Jesuit priest from the Italian-speaking Swiss valleys who died in the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1583 and was later beatified as one of the Martyrs of Cuncolim. He was born in 1552 at Ascona, on the northern shore of Lake Maggiore in what is now the Swiss canton of Ticino. Little is recorded of his family or childhood. In the 1570s he entered the Society of Jesus in Italy, completed his novitiate and studies, and volunteered for the overseas missions. He was sent to Portuguese India and arrived at Goa in the last years of the 1570s or at the beginning of the 1580s, where he was ordained.

The Jesuit province of Goa was then expanding its work in the district of Salcete, south of the island of Goa, after the Portuguese had annexed the territory. Berno was assigned to this mission. Jesuit correspondence of the period describes him as energetic, proficient in the local language, and active both in pastoral care of new Christians and in the campaign, supported by colonial officials, against Hindu temples and public cult. Such measures provoked lasting resentment in several villages, including Cuncolim, which had already seen temples demolished and which resisted revenue collection and conversion.

On 25 July 1583 Berno went with four other Jesuits to Cuncolim. The superior of the group was the Neapolitan Rudolf Acquaviva; with them were the Castilian priest Alfonso Pacheco and two Jesuit brothers, Francesco Aranha and António Francisco. They intended to mark a site for a church and to plant a cross. Villagers who opposed the Portuguese religious and political presence attacked them. All five Jesuits were slain, as were several Goan and Portuguese lay Christians who had accompanied them. Contemporary accounts, written by Jesuits in Goa, portray the deaths as martyrdom suffered for the faith; modern historians also situate the killings within a local revolt against colonial expropriation and forced religious change.

The remains of the five were recovered after some days and brought to Goa for burial. Cultus developed within the Society of Jesus and among Catholics of the region. A formal cause was introduced in Rome, and on 30 April 1893 Pope Leo XIII beatified Rudolf Acquaviva and his four companions, including Pietro Berno. They have not been canonized. In the liturgical calendars of the Jesuits and of the Archdiocese of Goa their memory is kept in late July, on or near the anniversary of the massacre. Berno is one of the earliest Swiss Jesuits to be honored as a blessed and is commemorated in his native Ascona as well as in Goa.