Today, October 10, is the memorial of Saint Daniel Comboni.
Founder of the Comboni Missionaries.
Daniel was born in Limone, Italy in 1831. He became an Italian bishop who served in the missions in Africa and was the founder of both the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Comboni Missionary Sisters.
He studied under Venerable Nicola Mazza in Verona where he became a multi-linguist. Since 1849 he had vowed to join the missions in the African continent though this did not occur until 1857 when he traveled to Sudan. He continued back and forth from his assignment to his native land in order to found his congregations and take care of other enterprises, and returned in 1870 for the First Vatican Council.
He tried to build awareness across Europe to the plight of the poor in Africa. He traveled to London, Paris, and other cities to collect funds for a project he started to tend to the poor and sick. His mission to Africa gained ground when he was appointed bishop in 1877. The event gave him greater freedom to establish branches of his order in Khartoum and Cairo among other locations.
In 1881, Daniel was already exhausted and suffering from high fever. He died soon after at age 50 in Khartoum, Sudan. His final words were “I am dying, but my work will not die.”
He was beatified in 1996 and canonized in 2003 by Pope Saint John Paul II.