HONG KONG (SE): The Diocese of Hong Kong received news that Father Angelo Lazzarotto [梁作祿神父] of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions [PIME] passed away in Italy, on the morning of April 15. He had spent his recent years at the PIME home for elderly missionaries Rancio di Lecco, Italy.m He would have been 100 on May 14.
He was born in Falzé di Piave, near Treviso, in northern Italy, in the Diocese of Veneto, on 14 May 1925. He he entered PIME seminary in Treviso at the age of 15. He then moved to the PIME seminary in Genoa for high school. He was ordained to the priesthood on 22 December 1947.
“I made my decision to become a missionary when I was attending secondary school in Conegliano Veneto. I was an enthusiastic member of Catholic Action, which introduced me to the tragic events of the civil war in Spain and its many martyrs. I also remember our religion teacher’s courageous condemnation of Mussolini’s racial laws,” he once said.
He first arrived in Hong Kong in Hong Kong in early December 1956 and worked in different capacities both in Hong Kong and Rome and beginning in the 1970s, he was a pioneer of the first contacts with Catholics in China.
Acting on the mandate of then-Bishop John Baptist Wu [later made cardinal], then-Father John Tong Hon, along with Maryknoll missionaries, Father Peter Berry and Father Elmer Würth, the helped found the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong.
May he rest in peace.
