In the valley of Alghedé in Ethiopia, Saint Justin de Jacobis, bishop, of the Congregation of the Mission, who, gentle and full of charity, devoted himself to apostolic works and to the formation of a native clergy, soon enduring hunger, thirst, tribulations, and imprisonment.
Lifespan: 1800–1860
Beatified: 25 July 1939 by Pope Pius XII
Canonized: 26 October 1975 by Pope Paul VI, St. Peter’s Square
Memoria liturgica: 31 July
“My children, you shall all have a share of my affection — I wish to bless you!”
He was born at San Fele (Potenza) on 9 October 1800, the son of Giovanni Battista and Giuseppina Muccia. Around 1812 the family moved to Naples, perhaps for economic reasons. In 1818 he was directed toward the community of Vincentian missionaries; continuing his studies, Justin de Jacobis moved to Apulia, and it was there, on 18 June 1824, in the cathedral of Brindisi, that he was ordained priest.
When he departed for Africa in 1839 as a simple Apostolic Prefect, Justin de Jacobis was responding not only to his vocation — the voice God had whispered to his spirit, which he had promptly heeded — but also to the invitation of the then Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, thereby accepting the missio canonica conferred upon him by the authority of the Church. It is precisely in this meeting of personal intention and formal appointment that we find the conjunction which, as an expression of true obedience and generous fidelity, could not fail to presage the effectiveness of his future evangelizing work. He was a good and faithful servant (cf. Matt. 25:21; Luke 19:17), who, sent into the vineyard of the Lord, laboured tirelessly amid unceasing tribulations to break it up, cultivate it, and make it fruitful. Yet for so great a mission he had prepared himself with care and was, one might say, already practised in it.
In his apostolate on African soil — which soon became for him a second homeland — two distinctive characteristics emerged clearly, and these seem to us to be particularly valid guiding principles for missionary work as it is understood in the modern age. Ordained a bishop on 8 January 1849 by Bishop Guglielmo Massaia, a Capuchin who was later sent to Ethiopia and proved himself another great missionary apostle of that African land before being raised to the Cardinalate, Justin de Jacobis had, first and foremost, a constant concern to form the indigenous clergy, thus anticipating the line of vocational pastoral care which, especially after the Second Vatican Council, must now be considered firmly established within the Church.
Working in Tigray, at Adwa and then at Guala, he applied the charisms of his vocation to awakening, gathering, and educating vocations among the faithful of the nascent Christian communities: to prepare indigenous priests he founded a seminary, which he named the Collegio dell’Immacolata — the College of the Immaculate.