“The Love of Christ Impels Us”
n the main church of their Motherhouse in Parma, Italy, now called the Shrine of Blessed Guido M. Conforti, the Xaverian missionaries venerate icons of deep spiritual meaning for their missionary
charism.
One who enters the church by the main door is immediately struck by the beautiful mosaic which sits behind the altar and seems to embrace it.; It portrays the Blessed Trinity and Mary as Queen of the missions, flanked on each side by St. Joseph and the Apostle Paul, by the patrons of the missions Francis Xavier and Therese ‘the Little Flower,’ by Francis Fogolla, martyred in China in 1900, together with 26 Catholic and 32 Protest Christians, and by Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, founder of the Xaverians. His body rests under the main altar.
In a small side chapel on the left hangs a large Crucifix and behind it are the remains of Fr. Caio Rastelli, the first Xaverian to die in China. The Crucifix, the “founder’s Crucifix,” is the same one before which, in his parish church, young Guido used to stop on his way to and from school and which “used to tell me so many things,” as he often reminisced.
This past September 2003, I visited this Shrine for the first time in my 26 years with the Xaverians, and I stood in prayer and reflection before the “teca” containing our Founder’s hallowed body and before “his” Crucifix…
Who was Guido Maria Conforti, beatified by Pope John Paul II on March 17, 1996?
ots of good will, fragile health. He overcomes some family opposition to enter the seminary, but at 17 begins to suffer epilepsy and another mysterious illness. His rector, Fr. Andrew Ferrari, future Archbishop of Milan, encourages him and at 23 years of age he is ordained a priest. At 28 he is already vicar general of the diocese of Parma. He, however, is thinking of further horizons, of distant mission fields. Of the Far-East, after the example of the pioneer Francis Xavier, apostle of the Indies.
But his health won’t let him: no missionary institute accepts him. So, in 1895, at 30 years of age, he founds the “Congregation of St. Francis Xavier for the Foreign Missions.” He founds it, guides it, with only a few students at first, and with the help of only one priest. To support it he gives his whole paternal inheritance. And on March 1899, behold, the first two Xaverian missionaries are on their way to China.
At this point, Guido Maria Conforti finds himself to be an easy figure in the Italian church: he is vicar general in the administration of a ‘local’ diocese, and at the same time is thrust toward faraway missions. And he is controversial for those who don’t see the need of the missions or seem to be leery of them (“He deprives local dioceses of their priests!”). Made Archbishop of Ravenna at 37, he must leave this new post only a year later, once again for reasons of poor health.
One of his missionaries in China, Fr. Caio Rastelli, dies in 1900 overwhelmed by the hardships caused by the Boxer Revolution. Conforti recalls the other and gives all his attention to the Institute. But in 1907 sees himself being “called back” to the service of his local diocese as coadjutor of the Bishop of Parma and later as successor. He will lead the diocese for 25 years, active to the very end: he presides at two diocesan synods, and undertakes five pastoral visits to his 300 parishes.
In the meantime, his Xaverians return to China. In 1912, Fr. Luigi Calza is named bishop of Cheng-chou, and is consecrated by Conforti in the Cathedral of Parma. Also in 1912, Conforti vigorously co-sponsored the initiative of an appeal to the Pope for a strong exhortation tot the Italian church to assume and sustain evangelization throughout the world. The idea had come from Fr. Joseph Allamano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries of Turin. World Mission Sunday, instituted later in 1926 by Pope Pius XI, will bring to fruition a proposal already contained in that appeal of 1912.
Finally, 1928 brings to Guido M. Conforti his most momentous day: he is in China on a visit to his spiritual sons. And a dream of a lifetime becomes reality: to know the young Church and its new Christians, lively in the midst of arduous difficulties; to feel himself, with his missionaries, as having given life to the dream of Francis Xavier…
At the same time, this man thrust toward distant continents, doesn’t spare energies as the shepherd of his native diocese, starting with a work of re-evangelization through a renewed catechesis.
As Pope John Paul II will say on declaring Conforti blessed: “He knew how to live to the fullest the three dimensions in which the Church’s one evangelizing mission is carried: pastoral care of the local Church, commitment to the mission ‘ad gentes’ and the evangelization of those who have lost their sense of the faith” (cf. Redemptoris Mission, #33). Called to be Pastor of a portion of God’s people in an area where a disturbing rejection of the faith was occurring, Guido Maria Conforti discovered in the way of the mission ‘ad gentes’ a providential journey by which ‘he could cause a new current of divine life to flow into the souls of believers, increasing in them the fire of great missionary zeal…
What was the source from which his tireless zeal and total dedication to the mission ‘ ad gentes’ drew strength? It was Christ’s Cross, a source of inexhaustible love in those who give themselves to their brothers and sisters, near and far…”
His physical strength spent, so often stretched out by sheer will power, Conforti finally dies in 1931. At his beatification, in March of 1996, Pope John Paul II acknowledges Guido Maria Conforti’s “indomitable missionary spirit,” and points him out as “a model of genuine pastoral charity who knew how to invite believers to open their hearts to those who were distant without forgetting the needs of local communities, so that Christ, Redeemer of man, might be proclaimed to all.”
The body of Blessed Guido M. Conforti rests now in the Motherhouse of the Xaverian Missionaries in Parma, his spirit and inspiration vibrant and alive in the charism and zeal of his sons, present as “witnesses of the Gospel” in some twenty countries.
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)