Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) – The tercentenary of the death of a man who belongs to different people’s and nations ends in these days. Italian by birth, from the Val di Non, Trentino; but German for the education and formation received; American because acknowledged as the founder of one of the American States, Arizona, and then from 1965 present in this "memorial chapel" of Washington among the great of the United States of America; and, finally, a Mexican because his tomb is located in Magdalena of Kino, in the northern state of Sonora, where he long worked in several human and Christian fields.
Fr. Eusebio Francesco Chini was born on August 10, 1645, in Segno in the Prince-Bishopric of Trento, and died - at 65 – on March 15 1711, in Magdalena of Kino, in the Mexican state of Sonora.
Pardoned from death through the intercession of St. Francis Xavier, Jesuit for vocation, chosen at random from among his companions for the American mission, Fr. Kino (name he changed to adapt himself to the people among whom he worked) leaved for the mission of Primeria Alta, in New Spain, in 1687. Among the indigenous people, where he worked tirelessly as a man of God to proclaim the Gospel, he is also an agronomist, botanist, astronomer, cartographer, historian.
He is usually seen on horseback, always busy travelling a vast territory to meet the people of the "Pima" (= literally "I do not know, I do not know") or in the various settlements in the various mission stations built by him. Founder of several Christian communities, but unable to reside permanently in any of them for his intense travelling, he put community leaders to take charge of the spiritual welfare of those communities. Unable to know the local language, he proclaimed the Gospel through translators who accompanied him to mediate God's word in the language of the different ethnic groups.
A man, who lives at the turn of two centuries, the '600 and '700, he emerges among us for his timeliness and his commitment in incarnating the Gospel message among different peoples and cultures and to tell us how important it is for us, the people of today, to open ourselves to the reality of the world with all our resources and human and scientific skills.
The past year celebrated several events in Mexico, the United States of America and Italy, particularly in Trentino, his birthplace. The Pope, in the audience today, received a large delegation of his countrymen to crown the final event of the third centenary of his death. The canonical process for the beatification of Father Kinois at a good point.
We, too, look at him because in the missionary journey of the Church of today, we may always use, with virtue and holiness, every means to reach people with power and transmit the force of the good news of the Gospel. (Fr.Gerardo Caglioni sx) (Agenzia Fides 07/03/2012)
