Father Mario Rassiga, sdb, the author of the


FR. MARIO ACQUISTAPACE (1906-2002)



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FR. MARIO ACQUISTAPACE (1906-2002)


Born: 1906

Died: September 25 2002

Fr. Mario Acquistapace died on September 25 2002 at the Braga Old People’s Home in Hong Kong at the age of 96.

He left his country Italy for China on July 16 1926 and came first to Macao. Ordained priest in 1931, he was appointed a teacher in Hong Kong. In 1947 he was sent to Beijing to establish a Salesian house there. He gathered the poor and abandoned children. He spent all his time to instruct and give spiritual guidance. In the late 1940s, China fell under the control of Mao Zedong and the communists.



In the night of September 24 1952, Fr. Mario was expelled from China, being declared by the Mao’s regime as a persona non grata. Before leaving the mainland, he bid farewell to many of his pupils whom he had spend his best years to serve. He was the last Salesian missionary to leave Beijing, but not all the Salesians ever quitted. While the foreign missionaries left the mainland, many Chinese Salesians remained and lived in the “underground” Church. Unfortunately for many years we haven’t heard anything about them. The expelled missionaries went to Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.



Between 1952 and 1958 he was Provincial of the China-Philippines-Vietnam Province. By the end of his term as provincial, in the Philippines there had already been Salesian schools in Tarlac, Victorias, Mandaluyong, Malakati, the Boys’ Town in Cebu, and the parish Tsan Lidefonso. All these prospered and became famous. In spite of the difficult financial and travelling conditions of the post war years, Fr. Mario managed to make the canonical visits every year in the Philippines. Then he came to Vietnam and worked in Sài Gòn.

In Vietnam in particular, Fr. Mario could serve for a longer time. In 1952 he visited Hà Nội where the Salesians had begun an Orphanage at Thái Hà Ấp, but once again, with the communists’ victory in Vietnam in 1954 and the partition of the country: the North under the communist regime and the South under the republic regime, the Salesians had to leave Hà Nội.









Coming to the South, Fr. Mario continued his apostolate with his youthful enthusiasm and optimism. With a few confreres at the beginning, he contributed to build the houses of Thủ Đức, Gò Vấp and Trạm Hành. At Gò Vấp, the Orphanage could shelter 600 boys.

He continued his service to the poor and only stopped in 1974 when he was obliged to leave Vietnam before the imminent arrival of the communists in Sài Gòn. He went to Coloane Isle, near Macao, where he collected the relics of the Vietnamese and Japanese Martyrs and opened the Center of the Martyrs’ Relics. He stayed in Coloane until 1990 then went to the Braga Old People’s Home for the aged Salesian confreres in Hong Kong. He continued to work until his last days, receiving visits from his friends and past pupils who came to receive his spiritual guidance. He called on everyone to live a lively faith.


FR. GENEROSO BOGO (1917-1991)


Born: 1917 in Brazil.

Died: 1991 in Jaragúa do Sol, Brazil.

Fr. Generoso Bogo was among the Salesian pioneers who worked longer in Vietnam, from 1953 to 1975. Already in 1953 at the Orphanage at Thái Hà Ấp in Hà Nội, he was appointed to assist Fr. Majcen as a prefect of studies and to share his life with the poor orphans, then to accompany them to the South in 1954 after the partition of Vietnam, through Ban Mê Thuột, Sài Gòn, to Thủ Đức and Gò Vấp.

As a prefect of studies, he lived close to his boys, spoke Vietnamese beautifully, and also took care of the legal documents both civil and religious of the orphans. He had a very clear and fresh voice, was good at teaching songs and spoke an elegant French with a Brazilian accent.






He had been for many years rector of the first Salesian aspirantate in Thủ Đức and then rector of the Don Bosco Technical School in Gò Vấp.

A short while before 1975 he was sent to Đà Nẵng together with Fr. Tchong to prepare for a vocational school in the diocese of Mgr. Chi who had known the Salesians when he was in Bùi Chu before 1954.

When Đà Nẵng was lost to the communists in April 1975, Mgr. Chi recommended both Fr. Tchong and Fr. Generoso to return to Hong Kong. Fr. Generoso came back to his home country Brazil and died in 1991 in Jaragúa do Sul, aged 74.



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