Comboni Missionaries
in Malawi & Zambia
The celebrations continue on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Comboni Missionaries in Malawi, which took place at the end of 1973 with the arrival of Father Giuseppe Gusmini in the archdiocese of Blantyre. The following year, the first four parishes in the south-east of Malawi, around the Mulanje massif, were entrusted to the Comboni Missionaries. The celebrations began last August in the diocese of Lilongwe (Malawi).
On 29 October last, it was the turn of the Comboni Missionaries in the Shire area of southern Malawi to celebrate their important anniversary. They did so by inviting Fr. Luigi Casagrande (still working in the mission of Chikowa, Zambia), who was the first provincial superior when the province of Malawi-Zambia was created in 1984, to Lirangwe, one of the first missions taken up in the south of the country, as well as the seat of the first provincial house.
The guests of honour were the Archbishop of Blantyre, Mgr Thomas Mzuza, a Montfortian, Fr Michael Nyoani Mumba, provincial superior, a member of the Malawian parliament and the local chief. To make the occasion a real feast, many Christians from all over the parish, from distant chapels and from parishes once run by Comboni Missionaries, such as Phalombe, Chiringa, Muloza, Gambula, Mthawira and Chipini, attended.
Thirteen Comboni priests concelebrated with the archbishop. Also present were two Comboni Brothers from the technical school of Lunzu, three scholastics and 21 postulants. Silvio Zanardi, the oldest of the Comboni Missionaries in Malawi, still working in Lilongwe today, but well known and loved in Lirangwe for having been parish priest there for many years.
Mgr. Mzuza had words of true appreciation for the work of the Comboni Missionaries in the archdiocese of Blantyre, beginning with the mission of Mulanje, with the "great" - and still remembered - Fr. He then praised his involvement in important diocesan initiatives, first of all the setting up of the Inter-Congregational Seminary (ICS - an institute of philosophy and religious studies, founded by the Malawi Association of Men Religious in 1986), which became the Inter-Congregational Institute (ICI) in 2010, based in Balaka. For many years, this work has counted on the unwavering commitment of Father Pino Giannini, in collaboration with Montfortian and Carmelite missionaries, all driven by the great dream of having a real philosophical faculty, now able to welcome 130 postulants and nuns from various Institutes and religious Congregations.
St. Daniel Comboni wrote: "The missionary works in a work of the highest merit, yes, but extremely arduous and laborious, to be a stone hidden underground, which perhaps will never come to light, and which becomes part of the foundation of a new and colossal building, which only posterity will see rising from the earth" (Rules of 1871, Writings, n. 2701). Fifty years ago missionaries came here. They spent themselves totally for this people, but they did not work in vain, for they laid the foundations of something truly great. And today they are considered "ancestors" by tens of thousands of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, their true "posterity". "Yesterday", says Fr. Michael Zeitz, a Comboni missionary, "in Lirangwe, I felt this truth clearly, almost touching it with my own hand".