Italian parishioners bid emotional farewell to 'Don Joe'

Sadness and disbelief engulfed the 150 parishioners from Turin's Holy Trinity Church in Italy, who yesterday made their way to Gozo to bid their last farewell to their beloved "Don Joe" in his native village, Fontana.

Some sobbed and most had swollen eyes as they made their way out of Malta International Airport's arrivals lounge from where three buses took them to Fontana where Fr Joe was laid to rest.

"He would have turned 55 next Saturday," said Paul Galea, one of Fr Joe's closest friends, as we waited for the chartered Air Malta flight from Turin to land yesterday morning.

"He was so loved that the parishioners of Nichelino decided to charter a flight to pay their respects for the last time," Mr Galea said, recalling that Fr Joe always stayed at his (Mr Galea's) house when he visited Gozo.

The Gozitan priest, who had spent the past 30 years in Italy, died a week ago after a short but terminal illness, barely an hour after Gozo Bishop Mario Grech visited him in hospital on Thursday afternoon.

Mgr Grech, who blessed Fr Joe's coffin soon after landing yesterday, recalled the priest being fully conscious the last time he saw him.

"I asked him: 'Do you want to come to Gozo with me?' His reply was: 'No. I want to stay with my people'.

"I never imagined he would die so soon," an emotional Mgr Grech said.

"He taught me a great lesson and he should be an example to many priests," the Bishop said.

Indeed, it was Fr Joe's heartfelt commitment and his method of reaching out to young people through sport that the Italians recalled the most.

As 20-year-old Matteo recounted, Fr Joe had won the hearts of many people through his Gruppo Sportivo Don Bosco - a football nursery he started in 1986 which grew to be one of the largest football schools in the country hosting some 700 children.

"Football was his great passion," Matteo said as he clutched the nursery's red-and-yellow scarf which most of the visitors wore around their necks.

Fr Joe, it turned out, had been very close to the Torino and Juventus football clubs which, Matteo and his friends said, had scouted some of the children who attended Fr Joe's school. Some of their friends had made it to the top clubs, in fact.

Alongside the numerous messages of solidarity on www.nichelino.com that bore witness to Fr Joe's popularity and respect, was a posting by a certain "R. Bettega - Juventus Club", who wrote that Fr Joe's football passion had an important end which was in heaven.

Fr Joe's stature in Italy, won through hard work, was such that former President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro bestowed him with honorary Italian citizenship. During a funeral Mass in Nichelino, Paolo Gariglio, who preceded Fr Joe as parish priest, told the congregation and the thousands who gathered in the piazza he would never have imagined, at his age, that he would outlive Fr Joe.

The two had met in Gozo in the early 1970s where Fr Gariglio was attending a conference at the Gozo seminary which Fr Joe (then a student) had not attended because he could not miss his session at the football nursery.

Over lunch, Fr Gariglio had invited the young seminarian to Italy. On being ordained in 1977, Fr Joe went to the Diocese of Turin, initially for two years, at the parish of San Luca.

He stayed instead for seven, moving to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Nichelino in 1985 where Fr Gariglio, who had his own health problems at the time, needed a hand.

"He was first responsible for Catechism and soon founded his beloved Gruppo Sportivo Don Bosco. He became involved in the community radio and even helped out in the youth camps in the mountains and spiritual retreats," Fr Gariglio said.

The missions were also on Fr Joe's mind. Only last year, he managed to raise €45,000 for two schools being built in the Indian Diocese of Khammans.

Fr Joe had come up with a radio initiative called "Ring us up!" inviting listeners to phone in and donate money for the missions. "It was a Maltese activity with an English slogan. But it soon became a Nichelinese event!".

The Gozitan had a distinct accent when he spoke Italian, but the people of Nichelino hardly noticed.

"He was one of us, and will be missed by many," said Luisella, a catechism teacher at San Vincenzo and the secretary at the Don Bosco sports centre.

God had sent "Don Bosco" - as the Italians called Fr Joe - and he had left them a second time.

Yesterday's funeral Mass was celebrated by Gozo Bishop Mgr Mario Grech as well as four priests from neighbouring parishes in Turin, including Fr Dennis Schembri.

Among the mourners were President Eddie Fenech Adami and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anton Tabone.