Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Addis Ababa (Agenzia Fides) - After 52 years as a missionary in Eritrea and Ethiopia, Bishop Armido Gasparini and Italian Comboni missionary died yesterday 21 October, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Bishop was emeritus Vicar Apostolic of Awasa, in southern Ethiopia, where he was sent by Pope Paul VI as Apostolic Prefect in 1973 and Bishop in 1979. He was 91, born on 19 August 1913 in Lizzano in Belvedere, Bologna Italy.
In 1930, at the age of 17 Armido joined the Congregation of the Comboni Missionaries, Father Romeo Ballan, the Congregation’s Procurator general told Fides. After studying theology at the Urban College in Rome and being ordained a priest 1938, Armido was sent on mission to Gondar (Ethiopia), where he was made a prisoner of war. After the war he was sent to Asmara where he opened and directed “Comboni College”, primary and secondary school which won nation wide approval. From 1959 to 1973 Father Gasparini was in Roma, as Procurator General of the Comboni Missionaries to the Holy See Santa Sede, until he was given the responsibility for a new Comboni mission in southern Ethiopia.
Besides being a man of great intelligence, fluent in ten languages, European and African, he was a hard worker and formed good relations with benefactors and organisations and his heart and life were for the Mission. He founded a congregation of women religious, “Servants of the Church”, and was particularly devoted to their formation in recent years since the Pope accepted his resignation at the age of 80.
His funeral will be held on Saturday 23 October in Awasa where he will be buried as the first Bishop of that mission. Announcing the death, Father General of the Comboni Missionaries said he wished to thank God for the long and laborious missionary life granted to this exemplary confrere who served the Church and the Mission with generous fidelity. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 22/10/2004; righe 23, parole 320)
