Beatified martyrs are ‘seeds of peace’ for Congo

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, the Archbishop of Kinshasa, beatified three Italian Xaverian missionaries and a Congolese priest who died in the 1964 Simba rebellion.

Fr Luigi Carrara and Fr Giovanni Didonè, the Xaverian priests and Br Vittorio Faccin from the same order died alongside Fr Albert Joubert, a priest of the Diocese of Uvira in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although warned of an impending rebel threat, the four chose to stay in the country – then known as Zaire – as it navigated its transition to independence. On 28 November 1964, the Simba rebels executed the priests in Baraka and Fizi, two locations in the east of the country.  

Cardinal Ambongo, the head of the Congolese Church, presided over the beatification on 18 August at the St Paul Cathedral in Uvira, the capital of South Kivu Province. He urged Congolese to draw inspiration from the martyrs on their sixtieth anniversary and to work for peace and reconciliation.

“The best tribute we can give to our martyrs is to make peace and harmony flourish in this region,” he told the congregation at the beatification Mass, during which he also described the blood of the martyrs as the seed of evangelisation.

Archbishop Marcel Utembi Tapa of Kisangani told The Tablet that the Congolese Church had been busy with other retreats and celebrations before welcoming the four new blessed martyrs following the proclamation.

Fr Carrara, born in 1933, had learned the local language to be able to carry out his mission work effectively. Faccin, born in 1934, had dedicated his life to working with Catholic youth. They were killed together in Baraka. Rebels on a jeep had arrived at their Baraka church and ordered Faccin to board the vehicle, and shot him when he refused. They killed Carrara as he knelt beside him.

Fr Didonè? was also in his thirties and was noted for his work with the poor. He worked at the Fizi mission with Fr Joubert, born in 1908 in Saint Louis de Morumbi-Moba, was the fifteenth priest ordained in the Diocese of Uvira and worked in teaching and school management. Rebels killed them both after they let them into the mission.

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