Following in the Footsteps of St. Daniel Comboni

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died at the hands of an assassin who strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the United States. That same year in Italy, a young priest named Daniel Comboni said to a friend, “Bear in mind that I cannot live except for Africa and what concerns Africa.”

Just about everybody knows Abraham Lincoln to one extent or another, but relatively few people know Daniel Comboni, even though these two men lived and died for the same cause – the freedom of Africans. The freedom Daniel Comboni gave his life for was a bit different, however.

Born on March 15, 1831 in Limone, a small town on Lake Garda in northern Italy, Comboni grew up poor and was the only child of eight to survive full adulthood. He was very close to his parents. He studied in Verona for the priesthood, but always his heart beat with a mission spirit. First he wanted to go to Japan because he had been so inspired by the lives and deaths of the Japanese martyrs, but the more he learned about Africa and its struggles, the stronger the call became to go there.

In 1857, at the height of the slave trade, Father Daniel Comboni made his first trip to Africa, and with five other priests, he lived a primitive missionary life in Egypt. Within six weeks, one of the priests lay dead of fever. This tragedy, the extreme hardships of day-to-day survival, plus the news that Comboni’s mother had died should have been enough to make this young man give up and go home.

Because of ongoing sickness he couldn’t shake, he did go back to Europe after a couple of years, but just for a reprieve. In spite of the great odds, Daniel would not give up.  He had witnessed firsthand the inhumane treatment of African men, women and child slaves as they were herded through the desert in chains to be sold.  People, he said, …“gifted with intelligence as a sign of divinity and made like the Blessed Trinity…”  This is what spurred him on – to bring this reality to life in people who were not yet aware of their kinship with God. But how?

One day, in 1864, it hit him like a bolt of lightning, a new plan for the Christianizing of Africa. It all came together for him and he wrote non-stop for days. He poured out on paper, and in great detail, his dream of actively involving, to the fullest, the peoples of Africa in the struggle for their own freedom and in the proclamation of the Gospel. Save Africa with Africa!

The Plan worked, and is still working. Today in Africa, there are schools at every level, including seminaries that prepare students of both sexes to be their own protagonists, their own evangelizers. African priests and sisters serve in African parishes. So successful was Comboni’s Plan that priests,“born and bred” in Africa, are now missionaries in other countries, including the United States.

This Plan didn’t stay just with Africa.  Its universality has been cause for its implementation in Europe, Asia and the Americas.  Close to 4,000 Comboni priests, brothers, sisters, and lay missionaries carry out the spirit and charism of Saint Daniel Comboni in 44 countries.