AMERICA/BRAZIL - Towards the Day of the Missionary Martyrs: Father Nazareno Lanciotti, killed "for the love of God and for the love of his people"

Monday, 22 March 2021 martyrs   missionary animation   priests  

Jauru (Agenzia Fides) - In view of the 29th "Day of prayer and Fasting in Memory of the Missionary Martyrs" to be celebrated on March 24 (see Fides, 16/3/2021), we offer the testimony of Father Nazareno Lanciotti, an Italian missionary, killed twenty years ago in the State of Mato Grosso, where he had spent thirty years of intense missionary commitment, dedicated to the proclamation of the Gospel and to human promotion, as explained to Fides by Fr. Enzo Gabrieli, postulator for the cause of beatification, who visited the places where Father Lanciotti worked.
"It was February 22, 2001, when Father Nazareno died in Saint Paul hospital, forgiving his murderers, after the attack that took place in his rectory on the previous February 11. He left following Mato Grosso Operation as a young priest, in 1972, after the formative years in Subiaco and the first pastoral experiences in some Roman parishes. Later, together with other young Italians, he decided to dedicate himself to the real mission at the service of the young diocese of Caceres. He requested and obtained a mission space from the local bishop. He was assigned to monitor the parish of Jauru, a difficult reality, made up of many scattered communities in the forest. He did not lose heart and on the back of a mule he reached what would become, thanks to his passion and faith, a garden city around the parish church of Our Lady of Pilar.
He arrived at night and found his church-hut demolished and propped up; there he settled and was immediately consoled, as he himself told, by the presence of the Virgin who he heard her say "I was waiting for you". And it was his deep love for Mary, together with the centrality of the Eucharist in his missionary work, his devotion to the Pope, which pushed the accelerator of the mission of Jauru, which became a "model" and center of diocesan activities.
Jauru was a very poor village. The priest realized that many mothers died in childbirth, many children lost their lives due to trivial diseases. So he thought of building a sanatorium because the nearest hospital was two hundred kilometers away. Over time, the health center was transformed into a true Catholic hospital that today operates within the national network.
Together with the hospital, Fr. Nazareno thought about caring for the faithful, building the community and for this reason he began the realization of a parish center and chapels in the forest to serve the many faithful in small groups and offer them a spiritual and social point of reference. He built about forty in his life. An adventure that led him to build a praying community that had its symbolic center, not only geographically, in the large parish church inaugurated in 1975 in the center of Jauru, with many peripheral cells where every day, even in the absence of the priest, people prayed, adoration and catechesis were held and continue to be held.
Over the years, the missionary also realized that many elderly and disabled people were abandoned by their families because it was difficult to assist them. Thus was born the home for the elderly which still today assists many people and offers work to the local population, together with the primary school dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi which gathered 400 children; only a few years ago the state school was opened. The priest, who was also highly esteemed by his bishop, also carried out a minor seminary experience for more than fifteen years, building a special structure that gave the diocese the first ten local vocations.
Jauru is also a border town (with more than ten thousand inhabitants) and has grown along the routes of drug traffickers on the border with Bolivia; over time it has become "a true frontier of evangelization" to the point of convincing the authorities to suspend the carnival by municipal decree. On feast days, in fact, the members of the prayer cenacles of the Marian Priestly Movement founded by Father Gobbi and of which Father Nazareno had become national leader, continue to gather there. His commitment as a priest, attentive to the morals and good of each person, in all areas of society, as well as to the care of life, exposed him to many threats and dangers.
The most difficult moment was when the construction of a large dam for electricity began. Workers came to the area from all over Brazil and nearby Bolivia, and places of prostitution and drug distribution points were opened in many places. The priest never tired of warning his parishioners of these dangers; every Saturday night he organized activities to distract the young people and warned them; many times he also met these workers and told them: "The adoration Eucharist, the rosary and devotion to the Virgin will save you".
He had met his young people also on the afternoon of that 11 February when he was shot to death. It was the day of Our Lady of Lourdes and Fr. Nazareno had celebrated a Cenacle with about a hundred young people. He was aware of the danger he was running and that evening, as a light drizzle fell from the sky, he said: "these are the tears of heaven for me". In a passage he had also told them, with a veil of sadness, almost like an omen: "when you look for me you will always find me at the foot of the tabernacle". There he was buried after his death.
It was a just after 9 p.m. when two men, with their faces covered, broke into the rectory where the missionary was having dinner with his collaborators and some guests. Pointing a gun at those present, they asked them for money and where the safe was. They threatened all of them, to stage a robbery, but the provocations had no effect. Fr. Nazareno calmed them down, he offered himself, and those present had put what they had on the table. But the killers' target was the priest. In the course of the criminal act, in fact, they themselves revealed that they had been sent by some local people who were upset by the actions of the Church and the priest. "We have come to kill you" one of them whispered in a shrill voice, adding "I am the devil". Before killing him, one of the two said again: "I have come to kill you because you bother us too much". And it was the truth: the parish had become the bastion and protection for many young people against the dangers of drugs and prostitution.
The two killers fled, leaving the money, which they were not interested in. The priest was immediately felpe and assisted. The local police, who were a few hundred meters away, did not arrive at the scene until the following day. Fr. Nazareno was prudently transported to Caceres and then to the hospital of Saint Paul, where he died eleven days later. His last words were of forgiveness for his murderers, in the presence of the same father Gobbi and another friend to whom he had also confided what had happened. He was buried at the foot of the tabernacle of his parish church; a few years ago his cause for beatification was opened.
It was around six in the morning on February 22, 2001, when Father Nazareno Lanciotti died after ten days of suffering offered for the love of his people. He had offered his life to the Lord by shedding his blood in the beloved land of Mato Grosso. Today the parish community of Jauru continues to be for the diocese of Caceres, and for the whole of Brazil, a point of reference, a lung of spirituality. Some of the works started in these thirty years continue to remain active, lit like flames of hope, for that small community in the forest, thanks to the volunteers who have remained there and to all those who were formed by the missionary.
The most beautiful aspect, both in the hospital and in the nursing home, but also in the parish itself, are precisely those seeds of good, those seeds of faith, which have now grown and become the host of catechists and adults who, strengthened by the testimony of Father Nazareno, continue to carry out those projects that have the scent of God". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 22/3/2021)


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