On Sunday, June 26 in Piazza
Duomo in Milan (at 9.30-12) Father Clemente Vismara (1897-1988) will be
beatified.
In 1983, on the sixtieth year of his mission, the Episcopal
Conference proclaimed him "Patriarch of the Burma".
Born in 1897 in
Agrate Brianza, he took part in the First World War, as a trench
soldier, emerging from battle with the rank of sergeant and three medals
for military valour.
He understood that "life has value only if you
give it for others" (as he wrote), and thus he became a priest and
missionary of PIME in 1923 and left for Burma.
Arriving in Toungoo, the
last city with a British governor, he spent six months in the bishop's
house to learn English, then he set off for Kengtung, an almost
unexplored land of forest, mountains and inhabited by tribal people,
still under the domination of a local king (sabo) sponsored by the
British.
After14 days of riding he arrived at Kengtung where he would
remain for three-months to learn the local languages and then the
superior of the mission accompanied him to Monglin reached after six
days on horseback, his last destination on the border between Laos,
Thailand and China.
It was October 1924 and in 32 years (in the midst of World War
II, a prisoner of the Japanese), Clemente Vismara, out of nowhere, built
three parishes: Monglin, Mong Phyak and Kenglap.
He wrote to Agrate:
"Here I am 120 kilometres from Kengtung, if I want to see another
Christian I have to look in the mirror".
He lives with three orphans in a
mud and straw shed. His apostolate is to tour the tribal villages on
horseback, to pitch his tent and make himself known: he brought
medicine, pulled rotten teeth, adapted to life with the tribals, the
climate, dangers, food, rice and spicy salsa, hunting for meat. From the
outset he took in orphans and abandoned children in Monglin to educate
them.
Later he founded an orphanage that became home to between 200 to
250 orphans. Today he is invoked as the "protector of children" and a
lot of the graces received concern children and families.
A life lived in conditions of extreme poverty, Clement wrote:
"This is worse than when I was in the trenches on the Adamello and Monte Maio,
but I wanted this war and I have to fight to the end with God's help
I'm always in the hands of God. Gradually a Christian community was
born, the Sisters of the Child Mary come to help, he founded schools and
chapels, factories and rice fields, irrigation canals, he taught
carpentry and mechanics, built brick houses and brought new crops,
wheat, corn, silkworms, vegetables (carrots, onions, salad - "the father
eats grass," the people would say).
Soon-to-be Blessed Clement founded the church in a corner of
the world where there are no tourists, but only opium smugglers, black
magicians and guerillas from different backgrounds, he brought peace and
stabilised nomadic tribes within the territory who, through the
schooling and health care, have raised their standards of living and now
have doctors and nurses, artisans and teachers, priests and nuns,
bishops and civil authorities. Many of them called Clement and
Clementina.
In 1956, when he founded the Christian citadel of Monglin and
converted fifty villages to faith in Christ, the bishop moved him to
Mongping, 250 kilometers from Monglin in the vast diocese of Kengtung,
where he had to start from scratch. Clemente
wrote to his brother: "I obey the bishop because I understand that if I
do things my own way then I do them wrong."
At the age of sixty he began
a new mission and also founded here the Christian town and parish of
Mongping, a second parish in Tongtà and left another fifty Catholic
villages in his wake. He died June 15, 1988 in Mongping and is buried
near the church and the Grotto of Lourdes, which he built.
On his grave
visited by many non-Christians fresh flowers and lit candles are never
lacking. Now, 23 years later, June 26, 2011, Father Clemente Vismara is
to be declared blessed of the Church Universal and is the first blessed
of Burma. A rapid cause for beatification, given the usually long time
needed for these Roman "processes".
Why is Father Clemente Vismara being declared Blessed? In life
he did not perform miracles, have visions or revelations, he was not a
mystic nor a theologian, he made no great works nor had any
extraordinary gifts.
He was a missionary like the rest, so much so that
when we discussed the opening of his beatification cause here at PIME,
some of his confreres in Burma said: "If you declare him Blessed you
need to declare all of us here blessed who have led the same life he
did".
In 1993 I went to Kengtung with two missionaries who had been with
Clement in Burma and we asked the Bishop Abraham Than, "Why do you want
father Clement declared blessed?".
He said: "We had many PIME
missionaries saints who founded diocese, including the first Bishop
Erminio Bonetta, still remembered as a model of evangelical charity, and
others whose memory is still alive. But none of them have sparked this
devotion and this movement of people who declare them saints, like
Father Vismara. In this I see a sign from God to start the diocesan process. "
As one of his brothers said: "Vismara saw the extraordinary in
the ordinary."
At eighty years had the same enthusiasm for his vocation
as a priest and missionary, peaceful and joyful, generous to all,
trusting in Providence, a man of God despite the tragic situations in
which he lived.
He had an adventurous and poetic vision of the
missionary vocation, that made him a fascinating character through his
writings, perhaps the most famous Italian missionary of the twentieth
century.
His trust in Providence was proverbial.
He had no budgets or
estimates, he never counted the money he had. In a country where the
majority of people in some months suffer from hunger, Clement gave food
to all, he never turned anyone away empty-handed.
The PIME brothers and
Sisters of the Child Mary would reproach him for taking in too many
children, old people, lepers, disabled, widows, mentally unbalanced.
Clemente always said: "Today we all ate, tomorrow the Lord will
provide."
He trusted in Providence, but across the world he wrote to
donors for support and help with articles in various magazines. He spent
his evenings writing letters and articles by candlelight (I have
collected over 2000 letters and 600 articles.) It must be added that the
writings of Father Vismara, poetic, adventurous, inflamed with love for
the poorest, have attracted many vocations to the priesthood, and
religious missionaries not only in Italy.
Clement represents well the virtues and the values of the
missionaries to be passed down to future generations. In the last half
century, mission to the nations has dramatically changed, but always
remaining to be what Jesus wants, "Go into all the world, proclaim the
Gospel to every creature."
But the new methods (responsibility of the
local church, inculturation, interreligious dialogue, etc..) must be
experienced in the spirit and continuity of the ecclesial tradition that
dates back to the Apostles.
Clemente is one of the last links in this glorious Apostolic
Tradition. He was in love with Jesus (he prayed a lot!) in love with his
people, especially the small and the least and wrote: "These orphans
are not mine, but of God and God never allows us to lack the necessary".
He lived to the letter what Jesus says in the Gospel: "Do not worry too
much, saying, 'What shall we eat? What shall we drink? How will we
dress? '. The ones who do not know that God cares for all these things
... But if you look for the Kingdom of God and do his will, everything
else God will give you and more "(Matt. 6, 31-34). Utopia? No, Clemente
was a living reality, which brings joy to the heart despite all the
problems he had.
I visited Burma in 1983, at 86 he was still parish priest at
Mongping. I wanted to interview him about his adventures and he told me:
"Forget my past I have told that story too many times. Let's talk about
my future” and he spoke to me about the villages to visit, schools and
chapels to be built, the requests for conversion that came from various
parts. As a confrere said: "He died at 91 without ever being old." He
had kept the enthusiasm of the early days of his mission.
Father Clemente Vismara is one of about 200 PIME missionaries
who since from 1867 until the present have been based in north-eastern
Burma in six of the 14 dioceses in Myanmar: Toungoo, Kengtung, Taunggyi,
Lashio, Loikaw and Pekong, with about 300 thousand baptized, indigenous
bishops, priests and nuns, more than half of Catholics in Burma.
Clemente is one of many who, all together, are a good example of the
missionary tradition and spirit of the PIME, that continues to assist
the Church of Myanmar in various ways, among other things, in taking on
their missionary vocations, training them and sending them into the
institution's community present on every continent to proclaim Christ
and found the church in other nations.