Biography of Blessed Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi

Blessed Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi

Also known as

• John Mazzucconi
• Johannes Baptiste Mazzucconi
• John Baptist Mazzucconi

Profile

Priest. Member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. Missionary to Papua New Guinea. Martyr.

Born

1 March 1826 in Rancio di Lecco, Italy

Died

7 September 1855 in Woodlark Island, Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea

Beatified

19 February 1984 by Pope John Paul II

Readings

Let my future be as God wants it. I leave it in the hands of Him who cannot operate but for the good of all. And this is enough to make me happy. - Blessed Giovanni

Tomorrow I will embark and Saturday, the day after tomorrow, I will already be on the high sea on my way to Woodlark. This year, when I sailing to Sydney, on Wednesday of Holy Week, we were overtaken by a hurricane that ripped our sails and snapped our ropes and the top half of a mast. It then drove us hither and thither all over the sea without direction and with little hope, for four days, until the Easter sun shone again like some new thing above us, and we were truly like people raised from the dead.

Well, that God who saved me then will be with me again in this journey, and if I do not abandon him, He will be with me always, and while He is with me everything that can happen to me will always be a grace, a blessing for which I should thank Him. If in danger He wants to withdraw or pretends to be asleep on the bow of the ship, like the Apostle, I will go to wake him and let him see my danger. And then if he does not want to listen, I will say: Lord, command me to come to you, and my soul will walk on the waters, it will go to his feet and be content forever.

I do not know what He is preparing for me in the journey I begin tomorrow. I know one thing only, if He is good and loves me immensely, everything else: calm or storm, danger or safety, life or death, are merely changeable and passing expressions of the beloved immutable, eternal Love. Yes, my beloved brethren, we have another country, another home, a kingdom where we must all meet, where there will no longer be separations or departures, where past sorrows and danger will merely serve to increase our consolation and glory. - Blessed Giovanni, writing just before his last missionary journey