...the
hippopotamus of the Zambesi
He
was born in 1940 in Trieste, attended the Archbishop’s Seminary of Gorizia.
After his family moved to Genova, he continued the Seminary there until he
was ordered priest in 1964 by Archbishop Giuseppe Siri.
The same year he joined the Combonian Missionaries. After his novitiate at Gozzano (Novara), he was in charge of gathering and organising the younger missionaries in several locations in the north of Italy, where he is the founder of MYC (Missionary Youth Care).
In 1971 he was destined to Mozambique and he left to Portugal to learn the language and obtain the documents to go there, where the war of liberation was taking place. In July 1972 he obtained the documentation and on July the 20th he left Lisbon.
At that time the war of independence of Frelimo caused many death on both parts with many massacres. His public declaration of the right of freedom of Mozambique, of the stupidity of war and of the foulness of massacres caused his and his brothers’ expulsion from the Country on 12 April 1974.
The “coup d’état” in Portugal on the 25 April, 12 days after the expulsion from Mozambique, allowed him to go back there the following September.
With the new govern of Frelimo, a Marxist Leninist party, missionary action was prohibited and they were forced to teach or to carry out social duties.
Missions and all their belongings were incorporated by the State and one of the missions with the greater number of schools, Boroma, was also incorporated by the government. Under the Frelimo, Padre Claudio teaches maths and sciences and at the same time he teaches young people who are under the influence of the actual politics to look for justice.
Boroma is on the Zambesi River, close to Tete. The Portuguese had just completed the huge dam of Cabora Bassa thus creating a large lake rich of fish.
With
this abounding of fish the creation of a fish centre to feed the population
of Boroma and surrounding, about 4,500 lives became a challenge, most of all
during the war between the soldiers of Renamo and the Frelimo governmental
force. Padre Claudio created the “Escolar Fish Center” and the Minister of
the Education elected him Director from 1982 to 1986. When he came back to
Italy, for a short time the leadership of the “Escolar Fish Center” was honoured
by a young Mozambique fellow trusted by Padre Claudio.
In Rome he attended the course of anthropology at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana for one year. After having spent some time in the UK to learn english, the official language of the countries close to Mozambique, he was destined to Spain, Santiago de Compostela, where he stayed until 1992.
In the meantime the armistice of the war between the Govern of Frelimo and the soldiers of Renamo was signed in Rome.
The time for war in Mozambique is over. A war that after the independence war gave 28 years of violence and devastation to the country. A war that left a country completely out of any resource, both financial and social.
In January 1993 Padre Claudio is back to Mozambique, in the same are where he was first destined.
The reconstruction is starting again. Reconstruction in terms of houses but also social and religious reconstruction of the Country.
From 1993 to 1995 he worked in the far east of the county of Tete to gather 300,000 refugees of war coming back from Malawi and reconstructed the Muturara Mission, on the Zambesi River. At the same time he started the exploration of the far west of the county of Tete, where three large missions were destroyed and abandoned and the missionaries were jailed. The Territory is some 45,000sqkm. In 1996 he succeeded in bringing the Bishop to visit these territories but unfortunately, he got seriously ill.
In
those years he founded a Scout group and starting in 1993 he organised regularly
summer meetings until the last one, at the Zimbabwe border, in June 2000.
From 1995 to 1998 the Mission of Estima was reconstructed and founded the
KUZA association, ONG of Mozambique with the aim of work for the education
of young people in the valley of the river Zambesi and on the lake having
a surface of 3,500sqkm.
During the first months of 1999, two boats of the KUZA association sunk in the heavy waves of the lake of Cabore Bassa: 11 died. It is a tragedy for KUZA. However, the organization survived thanks to the Italian association ISCOS (ONG linked to CISL) and start over again in the year 2000.
Since 1998 Padre Claudi started the exploration of the Mission of Mukumbura, at the Zimbabwe border, and, at the same time, he started to organise the reconstruction of the old mission destroyed and to recover the christian communities of the area abandoned to themselves since 28 years of wars. He also organised the transportation on the lake where large areas are completely isolated and constructed a catamaran 10m long for the Mission, in order to face the perils of the lake and reach the isolated areas on the opposite side, 180km away and the north area, which is completely without means of access and people are completely abandoned to themselves.
There is more and more to do, both for the growing christian communities and also for the old ones and for the development of the one of the most abandoned areas of the Country.
The Country will finally find its own way to progress, but it seems so far away. One thing we can trust on: faith in Jesus Christ Resurrected and Winner over the Death helped Padre Claudio to fight and never surrender.