About Fr. Aldo

Father Aldo Trento. Fr. Aldo is a missionary Italian priest who has lived in Paraguay for over 20 years. Over the course of that time, he has built the San Rafael Center Foundation to Assist Life while working in the San Rafael Parish in Asuncion, Paraguay.

Padre Aldo Trento

To read “A day with Father Aldo,”click here

(Excerpt: His friendship with Fr. Giussani saved his life. Since then, he has been caring for the incurables of Paraguay. The silence at dawn, the house for the orphans, the gratitude of politicians, and the pizzeria; then there is his life in the clinic, alongside those whose days are numbered. We followed the “priest of the Guaranì” in the heart of his mission, where “the mystery that allows the world to go on” happens all over again.)

Biography

My work? It’s the Lord’s

An 11 year-old child made the most important decision of his life, perhaps led by the impulse of divine grace which chooses each one from the womb. He took a burlap sack full of potatoes and, having emptied it, tried in vain to remove its dirt.

He put some clothes inside and a piece of cheese and went down to the village’s main street, waiting for a tractor. His mother looked on from a window of their newly built house, crying in disbelief. After a long wait, the “car” finally arrived.

The driver saw a boy raising his thumb, pointing to the east, towards  a beautiful mountain, full of green meadows and pine forests, where a home stood. It was the summer home of the Canossian priests, who used to spend their summer vacation with the 100 seminarians in the house.

From age 7, this boy had told his parents of his decision to become a priest and missionary, and they had always taken seriously this vocation. They knew that any desire to live as a protagonist of one’s own life comes from God, especially when it comes to consecrating oneself totally to the service of Christ and his Church.

The parents’ commitment to living life truly had begun in their courtship. Before the father of this child had left for the battlefront during World War II (1940-1945), he and his girlfriend had made vows of chastity, to which they were always faithful, thanks to the spiritual direction of the pastor and an intense sacramental condition.

Five years passed in the long and bloody war. The distance was hard, but it was also a necessary condition to maintain a reasonableness in front of their amorous relationship. This distance heightened their awareness and clarity of God’s plan regarding the decision they had to make once the war was over.

Thus, on April 26, 1946, they decided to marry. Both were the first-born of two well-positioned families, but the consequences of the atrocities from the war were tragically evident, and they lived in terrible misery, with barely a little lettuce and some dairy to keep from starving.

The wedding was beautiful, one of many the year the war ended. Finally, the soldiers who had not died in the war were able to crown their dreams of love with their girlfriends, who remained faithful and waited with infinite patience and prayed for the return of the beloved. Having finished the long feast,  they returned home at sunset, to a room rented by the father of Giobatta, the brand new husband of Mary. His parents, filled with greed, lent them only this poor and cold room for a few months. It was cold to the point that when the winter temperature in the town reached 25 degrees below zero, they couldn’t take off their clothes even to sleep.

But faith was bigger than the cold, and from the first wedding night, kneeling at the foot of the bed,  they consecrated their lives (now one flesh), to the Lord through the Blessed Virgin Mary. They asked only one thing: that their first child, when conceived, be entirely the property of the Lord, through the consecrated vocation of the priesthood. They also made a vow to get up each year, on the night between March 24 and 25 , the feast of the Annunciation of the angel to Mary, to kneel and pray the holy rosary, so that the boy who was born of his love would be a priest.

And so it was. After a few days the wife was pregnant, to the great joy of both. They spent a happy summer working hard in the woods and on the farm that produced just miserable potatoes and beans. But soon, Giobatta’s father forced the young family to vacate their home, just a few months before the birth of their first child.

Neither desperate nor angry, they humbly went to ask for help, as intelligent people often do, from the parish priest. The priest, having pity on the condition of Mary and her husband, gave them his bedroom. The joy of both was great and that Christmas of 1946 was the most beautiful of their lives.

They waited with the love of the Virgin for the birth of their first child, praying and keeping vigil. Finally, the New Year of 1947 arrived. It was January 12th and the town of Sovramonte, Italy woke up in almost 2 feet of snow. Mary began to feel the first signs of childbirth. The concerned husband took the horse and sleigh and rushed downtown, 10 miles round trip to seek a midwife. But he found the midwife to be drunk, and sadly returned up the hill to his house where the birth was already commencing. They entrusted themselves to the Virgin, and when the Mass began at 10:00 am (called High Mass), God sent a village midwife, the type that believed more in God than in physicians. Her name was Lorenza and she was already the mother of two priests. A great woman, but dirty. Mary later recalled that her nails were long and black with dirt. But beyond the hygiene, the birth went well.The child was born during the “Sanctus” from Mass, while the bells announced that now was the moment of consecration. The midwife, as if inspired, said: “This child will be a priest.”

Years passed and the father of this child had to move in search of food to eat. He had named his child Antonio, as a reminder of his own father whose conversion the grandson still prays for. The queen of their lives was faith and poverty, educating them to live depending on Divine Providence, which historically had the form of the hard work of a wood-cutter. They owned only a cow, some rabbits, and some chickens. They didn’t even have clothes to dress their children, who were born one after another. For this reason, they asked a seamstress to sew them some long skirts. In this way did not need underwear or expensive pants. It was a ‘typoi’ dress, shaped by the Jesuits to dress men and women.

Within this atmosphere of faith and austerity, not even the harsh winter was able to shake the personality of this family that preferred the cow and the pig as the only “ambient heaters” in the home.

They lived on the top floor of a house, leaving the

first floor to the animals with which they lived most of the winter. Home, work, dairy, and church were the places where the children grew and where the first son saw his vocation.

Part 2

It was a harsh and long winter, in 1954, when a Capuchin priest came to the parish for Lent. He was a missionary in Ethiopia, and he gathered all the children to recount the heroic actions of the missionaries. Among these children was Antonio, the eldest son of Giobatta and Mary.

He was 7 years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, looking very small and skinny. With eyes wide open, he was completely enchanted by the friar, to the point that the Father Arcangelo at the end of the talk, seeing his ecstacy, awoke abruptly with a question: “Do you want to be a missionary?”

The child felt like he was touching the sky, to the point that he ran home and told his mother: “Mom, Mom, I want now to enter the seminary.” His mother did not understand what had happened … but such was the discomfort and the insistence of the child that she had to approach the priest to ask if it was possible for this child to enter the seminary. Obviously, when the monk learned that he was only 7 years old and was in second grade, he looked at the boy and said, “You’re too small and the seminary is no place for children.”

But the child, surpassing his usual shyness replied, “Father, no matter that there is no place in the seminary, I can live and sleep at the door of the seminary.”

The father was moved and smiled, hugging the child, and advised his mother to continue praying for God to show what He wanted for his son in due time. Years passed and life went on as normal for the children in a small town in the Dolomite mountains, until finally one day, March 18, 1958, a miracle occurred. One that would radically change the life of this child and fulfill the prayer of his parents each year, on the night between 24 and 25 March, and the desire that friar had awakened in that child.

One thing is important to add. Between 7 and 11 years, the child once had the grace to see the first
and most beautiful movie of his life, a black and white film called “Father Damian among the lepers.”

THE BIOGRAPHY HAS ONLY BEEN TRANSLATED UP TO THIS POINT. IF YOU WANT TO READ IN ENGLISH FROM THIS POINT FORWARD, DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. IF YOU WISH TO CONTINUE IN SPANISH, GO HERE  http://www.sanrafael.org.py/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=244&Itemid=77&limitstart=1

It was a flash in the sun. A man, a missionary that he stuck with for life, and
his desire to share the pain of the sick. Mystery of Divine Providence, who spins slowly,
slowly, its beautiful ñandutí throughout life.
That March 18, 1958, even in winter, though missing a few days to the beginning
spring, March 21, God said in inevitably, accurate and decisive willingness
over that 11 year old boy. The town square was full of cut pine, in many
inches of snow. The kids played ball of snow when the bell tower warned
it was 16:00, the time fixed for the confession in preparation for the feast
the next day, March 19, feast of St. Joseph, at that time holiday. The boys came
devotion to the church, the pastor helped prepare them and then one after another entered the
sacristy where the priest of the Congregation of the Fathers Canossian was confessing. When
came when the blond boy, Antonio, with his usual shyness, knelt in the pew (even
still there) that looked at the window of the square and within seconds was the
confessor of sins that a stubborn boy, rebellious, often committed in that age. Finished
confession, the father asked: “Antonio, do you want to be a priest?” The boy, frightened because
was very shy and quietly, in a few seconds thought, “If I answer ‘no’, I fear I have rete;
Then, I answer ‘yes’ and then, once out of the confessional, I do what I want. ” He replied,
then, “Yes, father.” She left the confessional, but that boy was no longer as before. An unexpected
change had happened in his life was very clear that his destiny was to belong entirely to
Christ. Not even the slightest shadow of doubt crossed his mind, and that this perception is not
be clear and precise voice of God.
He left the classmates who were waiting in the square to keep playing and ran to his humble
house. His mother, who had just given birth to the fourth child of the marriage, he noticed immediately that
Toni (his nickname) was not more than before. From that day until July 28, 1958, his life
transformed by the strange, unpredictable call, and then compliance
experienced at age 7, has been preparing to leave home and enter the seminary. Without
tell the mother sent a letter to his father who worked away from home in Bolzano, near Austria,
advising him of his decision.
The father, surprised, being a man of faith and in a temper worse than they show the
character of his son, replied that if this was the will of God be fulfilled within the whole
pain by the fact that Toni was the first child between five (soon after the fifth born), to
which had to care for the mother during the day working on the farm.
The mother was aware of the decision and was happy, but was concerned about the “burden” and
“weight” that would have had to carry on their shoulders. The grandmother was the opposite. Toni preparing the
bag and undid grandmother. Thus came the July 28, 1958, and Toni, tired of the position of the
grandmother, the famous empty burlap sack full of potatoes, shook the dust, put in a
finger and little things called for help to a tractor driver who took him to the seminary.
Today at 63 years away, Toni remembers one thing from that “goodbye forever.” His mother
was at the window of the house, watching her eldest son in the street with this bag on his shoulders.
His eyes filled with tears, before the child get on the tractor, their eyes met and Toni saw his
mother mourn while he was happy. In a moment of shock, rather than take the old tractor
way up the mountain, said the mother, “Mom, will you come visit me?” No wait for an answer
because the owner of the tractor was in a hurry. A few seconds and Toni’s house out of sight …
but he was somewhere else, happy to be finally all of the Lord, and enter the seminary.
In half an hour arrived at the place designated and was received warmly by his superiors. Immediately
gave him a horrible dinner … in a tin cup. He could not eat … because that cheese
yellow out of a can that was inscribed: “Donation of the American People” to the poor
plantains that had lost the war, was intolerable to like us, more used to bean
and milk every day. Finally it was bedtime. They were 30 in a bedroom with twin
humble and blankets, they also waste the U.S. Army a few years before had
left Italy.
Remember the logo “U.S. ARMY”. I could not sleep … thought he had left his mother crying,
his brothers, his dad, far away, and for the first and last time during his seminary days, he cried.
But it was a short cry, because a seminarian hungry, knowing that Toni had been in
bag that was under the bed for a kilo of cheese mountain had been lifted and hidden
Toni thinking it was asleep, he had come to “steal” a bit and relieve hunger. Finished
the operation went back to bed, while Toni, unreacted realized since that time
that the path before him was beautiful, but hard, difficult, full of surprises … as indeed it is.
Since that day, Toni was the property of the Lord and the Virgin, who never left him, and now
is here in the parish of San Rafael.
“Remember that day is really for me to mourn for joy, because I could never imagine that God
wanted me. I thank my parents, from whom I learned everything and I have the certainty that from the sky
as that July 28, I look with a wry smile: “See that spoiled child, shy, with
all the clubs he made in his life, now is finally a true instrument of
mercy in Jesus’ hands. ”
I love to think this way about my parents, asking them to plead to the Lord and the Virgin
to be only a holy priest to serve the Church, serving my patients, my children and
few need of divine mercy. ”
Decisive Stage
In 1989, Don Luigi Giussani suggests the possibility of going on a mission to Paraguay. As Matthew in the
Caravaggio painting, Aldo points fingers and says, “Me? Do we need me? Are you
safe? “.
Do not trust yourself, not calm. Its history is full of ups and downs, his soul, tormented. It
a sort of post revolutionary reconcile that with obsolete word could be defined as
“Confrontational.” Although a degree in philosophy and theology, full of rage, had finished teaching
in a school in southern Italy, Battipaglia, and the relationship with a small group of graduates will
led to radical questions about the meaning almost forgotten their vocation. Aldo returned north,
a high school in Feltre, and joined students in GS at the time of the great political battles,
leaflets, meetings, demonstrations.
He himself narrates this time: “Well, a newly ordained priest (1971), in the 70’s, I lived a time
confused in my life and the Church. I was cured, but I was able to respond to anything.
I turned into an ideology of extreme leftist, Marxist. At that time I even believed that
armed struggle was a legitimate option to advance the class struggle. I was Che, Mao, the
Vietnam War …
I was confined to Salerno to attend to the children of prisoners, to see if “entering village.”
While there, one day, four boys from Battipaglia changed my life. In May 1974, with Professor
high school, I encouraged my students to come with me to a demonstration against the visit of Kissinger
in Italy. I could not go unless the room was empty, and four students refused. “You talk
a lot of action and change, but there are things that change only by Christ, “he said. They were boys
Communion and Liberation (CL). And I started to change my view of things. ”
“On March 25, 1988, I remember it like yesterday, kneeling and crying before I told Giussani
my despair. Giussani hugged me and said, “This is a grace for you, for her, for their children and
for the Church “And he did.
A task recovered, but the anxiety and torment he is not allowed. A deep crisis and mysterious. Came
the invitation to go to the mission. Aldo defended himself, although his was an old ideal: I am not
prepared, I am not worthy, I can not. Don Giussani gave him confidence, he said he was sure of it
yet it had never doubted his vocation as a priest, and asked Don Massimo
Aldo Camisasca to receive a missionary in the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo. And so, without eating
or drink, father Aldo was found in the Linate airport in the company of Don Giussani, who,
goodbye, told him to be inspired by the Jesuits of the seventeenth century and their Reductions. What an idea,
Aldo thought. Now, after Manzoni, we must turn to Hollywood because it was the spectacular
movie The Mission which spread in the popular imagination the story of a forgotten experience as
as extraordinary. On the other hand, in the wake of the slogan of Don Giussani, “going to give life to
that experience, “Aldo’s father has also become a student of” Christianity happy, ”
according to the famous expression of Ludovico Antonio Muratori. The small publisher parish (also
dedicated to that) of the Jesuits published biographies and historical texts, many in children’s version.
Someone came to the rescue
But this has not happened in a day. Indeed, for years (I get to Paraguay on September 6
1989), gripped by “the evil of life” did not pass, Aldo Paraguay did not see more than heat and dust.
Ramshackle transport endless travel, and people who cheated, insomnia, nights
white as that sense of exhaustion, that implacable sky to recount Graham Greene in “The
power and glory. ” Aldo’s father was not alone, but could not overcome the loneliness that was inside.
Until something changed. In 1999 the parish priest of San Rafael, Italian and as he belongs to the
Fellowship of San Carlos, Padre Alberto, returned to Italy for health reasons. Now Aldo is
indeed alone, but the new responsibility, quite unexpectedly, that comes to his rescue
sense of isolation.
Remember Don Massimo Camisasca “Bernanos writes that it must touch a work fund
born of truth. For Father Aldo did. When I had nobody with him and I was
decided to close our mission in Paraguay, he began to see otherwise his life, mission and
people who were around. ”
Looking at life with new eyes. “I took the test with joy Aldo wrote in a letter as a gift
through which God called me absolutely everything. I kept up just because I lived
those moments on his knees before him. ”
Currently, the “reduction” of San Rafael appears as an original urban parish, with that
patchwork appearance of architectural harmony conceals however: the fund is distinguished
profile of a medieval castle with its battlements and loopholes in the garden buildings seem
Dolomite shelter and the entrance, surrounded by flower beds, stands the Church.
“God chooses the foolish”
Every morning swarm the courtyard two hundred and fifty elementary school children, while
at the other end still works to expand the capacity of fifty seats in the clinic.
They are in the ambulatory activity (twenty three thousand people attended from 2002) and distribution
food and clothing. As the farm “Padre Pio”, where cows are bred and housed at the
AIDS patients, and financial cooperative that runs a microcredit system. By
tables are filled night of the pizzeria, which employs eight people and ensures some income. If
you pass through San Rafael on Monday, before the building you will find Van Gogh’s Café Father Paolino
Buscaroli (who lived in Chile and now the Society has sent to Asunción) to promote the “Monday
literary “lectures and discussions ranging from Dante to Isabella. And on Mondays, Tuesdays and
Wednesday will see working in the drafting of the Observer, a weekly insert in the newspaper Ultima Hora
the editor asked if sometimes does not share its contents, because he understands that in the parish
There is something very interesting to Paraguay: the works. Yes, but the thought that sustains
useful and responsible trial offered to all.
About 200 people work in San Rafael, hundreds of volunteers are involved. The lawyer
sorts the accounts, the employer repairs water pipes, the Chief Financial coordinates
catechesis, the housewife attends to the sick. But everything, Aldo’s father always says, arises from
“True pastor” who is the Lord, prays and loves to incessantly in the Blessed Sacrament chapel.
Although it may seem exaggerated, is to be believed: “I have nothing to do. God chooses the foolish and
ignorant to do what he wants. We choose to sinners. He came into the world to work, and
their job is to forgive and embrace. ” He also said the Italian embassy in
Asunción, during the reception in his honor by the appointment as “Knight of the Star
of Solidarity “, received the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, the” faculty of
displaying the insignia of the Order. ” (June 2008). I’ve missed your name to the Quirinal table
is a mystery as beautiful as the sky Paraguay, blue and near. This insignia returned when
Italian President tacitly approved the “execution” of Eluana Englaro.
It has also been declared illustrious citizen of the City of Asunción by the Municipal Board and
Mayor of the city in September 2008.
Present
Father currently writes for the Observer Weekly, the parish bulletin, the newspaper Tempi Italy,
Numerous books, also writes weekly testimonies and experiences of a group mailing list with more
1000 people. His writings are published throughout the world through movement Communion and
Release to which it belongs.
Father Aldo now travels the world invited to give lectures, meetings, talks to
San Rafael witness the work and life itself, as well as raise funds for the sustainability of
work.
Father Aldo is the founder of the Foundation San Rafael and all his works, now dictates
school community to all its workers in addition to the San Rafael and some managers
firms seeking their catechesis.