As If I Were a Serious Guy

INTRODUCTION

St. Daniel Comboni knew how to laugh. The missionary wrote of his own character in these terms: “God has given me a cheerful nature, and such that I am always rejoicing and feeling happy and perhaps there are very few people in the world happier than I.”

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Many times, he showed that he didn’t like missionaries who were pessimistic and gloomy. He wrote to his father about people who had dealt unjustly with him: “God will console me, disappointing those who made me suffer unjustly. So, let us be cheerful!”

He often willingly made jokes about himself. To the superior of the community of Verona, Fr. Sembiante, he apologized for his letters written in a disorderly fashion: “Don’t think that to important people I write so carelessly, without re-reading it, but to you, I appear to be what I am, just an average guy. With you, I have confidence. But with big people, kings, and cardinals in Rome, I write as if I were a serious guy, and I succeed in making them believe that I am.”

A source of inspiration was often Cardinal Barnabò, the Prefect of Propaganda Fide, with whom he dealt at length and whom he considered as the “father” of the Central Africa mission. Barnabò contributed with his slightly paradoxical utterances to mark the way for Comboni. “Our jocular cardinal has often made these phrases resound in my ear: ‘Either you bring me a certificate that assures me that you are going to live another 35 years or you must establish the College of Verona very well. If you meet with an accident that takes you to the other world, we must fear that your work will end with you’.”

Referring to Comboni’s and another of his missionaries’ enterprising spirit, Cardinal Barnabò noticed one day: “I must tie both of you with 24 chains because if you disentangle yourselves, nobody will keep you back, and you will end up in the Cape of Good Hope,” and he burst into colossal laughter.

About the “terrible Roman laziness,” about the “systemic and proverbial eternity of Rome,” but also about “its justice,” Comboni spoke on several occasions. He learned to maneuver in the course of his visits to the Italian capital and, at a particular time, he felt that his position was becoming comical since he was of humble origin, and yet he was received repeatedly by the Pope and elected as bishop: “A poor son of farmers from Limone, born in a cave and accustomed for many years to eat the traditional porridge with the sauce of the farmers.”

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