Fr Pietro Tiboni
Pietro Tiboni is fully a son of his native Trentino, a province in northern Italy, known for its mountains, lakes, mountain culture and traditions, and a blend of Italian and Austrian influences. His missionary life began and developed in the community of Tiarno di Sopra and the Ledro Valley, in its beautiful and also harsh environment. His heart and mind were opened and shaped during the processions to the little church of Madonna de Cross towards Tremalzo, attending Mass in the parish church, sharing the life of his community: cohesive, proud and bound to its traditions and the Catholic religion. In the very church where he had been baptised and confirmed, he admired the statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The vision of their three hearts wounded by Love, won him over to a vocation to which he would commit his entire long and adventurous life.
Under two large cherry trees, on the family farm, he prayed “I want to be a priest and a missionary”. Like him, three other children from Ledro were missionaries, his sister Germana, who took the name Sister Maria Carmela, and the priests Guido and Elvio Cellana. Thus, a long love story was born. St Daniel Comboni’s passion for Africa won Peter’s heart and would never leave him again. The famous Prof Cornelio Fabro had noticed in him the makings of a scholar and teacher and wanted to keep him at the university in Rome. But Tiboni felt called to something else: “My vocation is Africa! I am a Comboni missionary and I admire all Comboni fathers and sisters because they are ready to give their lives”.
Mission in Sudan
His first mission, in 1957, one hundred years after St Daniel Comboni’s first trip to Africa, was in southern Sudan, where amid the persecution and suffering of a people, he began to bear witness to an extraordinary charity. He went so far as to carry a sick young man on his shoulders, take him to the mission and treat his wounds until he was healed. His charity aroused admiration in his students: many of them would later become bishops and cardinals. Expelled from Sudan In 1964, he suffered the mass expulsion of the Comboni missionaries from Sudan, and had to return to Italy, where he excelled in teaching at the seminary in Venegono. In the crisis of the church in the post-council period, Tiboni accompanied his students to the priesthood, saving many vocations with his ability to inspire them to study and love the Church.
Sent to Uganda
He wished to return to Sudan, but was assigned to Uganda, where, through difficulties and hardships, he realised the need for priestly vocations to be born, nurtured in a living community. How to do this? Where to start? It was then, in December 1970 that he met in Kitgum, Gulu Diocese, in Northern Uganda, a group of lay missionaries belonging to Communion and Liberation, a Catholic movement founded by Fr Luigi Giussani, focusing on helping persons encounter Christ personally through community life, culture and education, emphasising that faith transforms every aspect of daily life. Their experience, strange and new, fascinated him. “I must be with them” he said. Meeting Luigi Giussani a few months later, in May 1971, was the spark that ignited again his missionary passion and his desire to contribute to the growth of local priests.
The Kitgum Pastoral Community (KPC) was born, a Christian community embodied in the context of then President Idi Amin’s Uganda, without racial or tribal divisions. During his missionary experience in Sudan, Tiboni admired Bishop Roveggio’s work in favour of the populations fleeing the violence and raids of the Mahdi’s rebel followers. Msgr Roveggio sheltered the fugitives – most of them former slaves - in the Gezira mission, which was conceived along the lines used by Comboni on the Malbes plains. On a vast stretch of land, Comboni initiated an experience of communal life embracing families, catechists and missionary fathers and sisters. Inspired by the Jesuit model of the “Reductions” in Paraguay, he clearly saw evangelisation and human development as going hand in hand.
Tiboni made good use of the experience of Gezira and particularly of Malbes, marked by the unity between the religious members and the lay people, the Europeans and the native population and the attention paid to meeting the needs of the people and the families. The novelty of this “place” of hope in the savannah in the heart of Africa did not escape power. Tiboni was expelled by dictator Amin’s government, along with 14 other fellow Comboni fathers. In Italy, he joined the General Council of the Comboni Missionaries. He made a fundamental contribution to the growth of the congregation, while taking care of the young soldiers belonging to the Communion and Liberation movement stationed in Rome. A friendship was born with these young men that still lasts today, years after his death.
Returns to Uganda
Finally, in 1979, he was able to return to his beloved Uganda, where he found “his priests” who had grown up in the KPC and participated in the ordination of his students. In the dramatic situation after Amin’s overthrow, amidst revenge and poverty, during the theological week held in the major seminary in Katigondo in August, 1981, he publicly proposed the birth of a movement of communion and life, which spread quickly, like a fire in the savannah. So many people adhered to the proposal of a new life in Christ, entrusted to the maternal care of Mary. People were reborn to new life, as at the beginning of Christianity: they were like the roses of the desert, unexpected and worthy of wonder. Friendship was a great virtue of this man of God: Tiboni had hundreds of friends since then, especially among the poor and marginalised. Each friendship was unique and special like the most desired one with Luigi Giussani, like with the Benedictine monks of the Cascinazza monastery on the outskirts of Milan.
His missionary range of action
Tiboni increasingly widened his “missionary range of action” and became the soul of a CL spread in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi, involving people and groups in apparently lost situations, allowing joy and peace to be reborn and flourish in the desert of violence and misery. His care for the sick and the poor was the foundation of the growth of the Meeting Point groups, born in the 1980s in Kitgum, Kampala, and Hoima to care for those living with HIV/Aids and their families. Their love for the suffering persons, the orphans, spread throughout Uganda and is still developing. His mission in Sudan from 1957 to 1964 was entirely dedicated to teaching in the seminary of El Tore, a forge of priests, numerous bishops, and a cardinal. After the experience of teaching in the seminary in Venegono, in Uganda he was assigned the role of educator at the International Scholasticate of Kampala.
The small community on the hill of Mbuya was home to seven students who attended the national Seminary of Ggaba, where Tiboni taught. Fr Tiboni had also been invited to teach at the diocesan seminary for adult vocations in St Mbaga, founded by Cardinal Nsubuga from Kampala, along the lines of the Pastoral Institute of Kitgum. He became such a well-known and authoritative figure that for several years he was one of the most popular guests at the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples in the Italian city of Rimini. He left the leadership of the Movement to his Ugandan friends and followed their growth like a true father, entrusting them to others. He was sure that the Other, his great Friend and Master, would always accomplish what he started.
After a long illness, he died at 9:30pm on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, at Lacor hospital in Gulu. On the evening of his death, Brother Elio Croce, a faithful companion during his last painful years in Gulu, wrote: “He has completed his Mission here on earth, but he will continue it up in heaven, offering himself and praying for us all as he did throughout his life and especially in these last times, nailed to the cross like Jesus”. Fr Pietro Tiboni was buried beside the Church of Christ the King in Kitgum, on a clear and sunny day, embraced by a crowd of friends who, like us, are grateful to God for the gift of his life.
About Fr Pietro Tiboni's life
On June 13, 2017, Comboni Missionary Fr Pietro Tiboni breathed his last at St Mary’s Hospital Lacor in Gulu, after a long life spent for the good of the African populations of Sudan and Uganda. His life was marked by his encounter with two great protagonists of the mission of the Catholic Church in the world: St Daniel Comboni and the Servant of God Luigi Giussani. The passion for people that these two great friends, whom he met in his vocation, ignited in Fr Pietro was always sustained by his consecration to the Blessed Lady Mary, mother of the Church and of all peoples. He also admired Bishop Roveggio’s work while on the mission in Sudan, where he served from 1957 to 1964. Bishop Roveggio sheltered people who were fleeing the violence and raids of the Mahdi’s rebel followers in the Gezira mission, which was conceived along the lines used by Comboni on the Malbes plains.
To commemorate the centenary of his birth on April 6, 1925, a solemn Mass will be celebrated by the Archbishop of Gulu, Msgr Raphael p’Mony Wokorach, at Christ the King Parish in Kitgum on May 25, 2025, starting at 9am. There will also be a presentation of the book on his life titled Father Tiboni, one of the holiest men we have, at Mbuya Parish in Kampala on June 1, 2025, at 3pm. The Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Luigi Bianco, will attend the event together with the author, Mr Filippo Ciantia, various witnesses and friends of Fr Pietro.
Filippo Ciantia, author of Father Tiboni, one of the holiest men we have
