Vincent Cimatti

Vincent Cimatti, born Vincenzo Cimatti, was an Italian Catholic priest and professed member of the Salesians of Don Bosco who became one of the principal founders of Salesian work in Japan. He was born on 15 July 1879 in Faenza, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. Raised in a devout family, he entered the Salesian congregation as a young man and was ordained a priest. Before leaving Europe he was already known within the congregation as an educator and as a gifted musician and composer. He wrote liturgical music, hymns, and other works, and he taught music in Salesian schools in Italy.

In the mid-1920s the Salesians undertook a new mission in Japan. Cimatti was appointed to lead the first group of Salesian missionaries, who reached Japan in 1926. He remained there for the rest of his life, a period of nearly four decades. The missionaries began their work in Miyazaki on the island of Kyushu and later developed houses and schools in the Tokyo region, including Chofu. They established oratories for young people, academic and vocational schools, parishes, and formation houses. Cimatti served as the first provincial superior of the Salesians in Japan. He studied the Japanese language and sought to present Catholic faith and Salesian education in forms that could take root in Japanese culture. He continued to compose music in Japan, producing sacred works that sometimes drew on local musical idioms.

The Second World War brought severe trials. As an Italian living in Japan he and his community experienced suspicion, material hardship, and the dangers of aerial bombardment, especially after the political changes of 1943. Cimatti stayed in the country throughout the war and shared the sufferings of the people around him. In the postwar years he took part in the reconstruction of Salesian works and remained a well-known figure of charity and simplicity. Contemporaries remembered him as approachable, fatherly toward the young, and constant in prayer and work, and he was sometimes described as a Don Bosco for Japan.

Cimatti died on 6 October 1965 in Japan. A reputation for holiness persisted after his death, and a cause for beatification was introduced. On 21 December 2018 Pope Francis approved the decree on his heroic virtues, and he received the title Venerable. He has not been beatified or canonized and therefore has no universally assigned feast day in the liturgical calendar. His memory is kept among Salesians and among Catholics in Japan and in his native Faenza.