October 10

Saint Daniel Comboni

Roman Martyrology

Gave his life to bring the Gospel and schools to Central Africa

Daniel Comboni was born in 1831 in Limone, a village on Lake Garda in northern Italy, to a poor family of gardeners. Of their eight children, he was the only one to live into adulthood. He studied in Verona, was ordained a priest in 1854, and in 1857 set out for the upper Nile, in today’s South Sudan, leaving his parents alone.

Fever killed many of his companions and he had to return to Italy, but he could not let Africa go. In 1864 he wrote a plan built on one idea: Africa would be saved through Africans, by training African teachers, craftsmen, priests and sisters. He founded missionary communities of men and of women, spoke out against the slave trade, and in 1877 became bishop for Central Africa. Drought and famine soon struck the mission; he died in Khartoum in 1881, aged 50.

Pope John Paul II declared him a saint in 2003. The missionaries he founded still work in Africa and beyond.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

Isaiah 52:7 · BSB

A prayer

God of all peoples, you set a fire in the heart of Daniel Comboni to share the Gospel with Africa and to trust Africans to carry it themselves. Give us the same courage and the same respect for others, so that we keep going when the work is hard and see your image in every person. Amen.