Priest dies after heroic sea rescue

The Evening Standard (UK) ^ | 7/31/03 | quovadis

[Calpernia]

AND, if not...can we? Make a FR medal...or something.

[First Amendment]

Thanks for pinging me - reminds me of a (true) story I read about a priest in a concentration camp. He was interned as a prisoner, and he saw a group of children being prepared to be killed. He volunteered to go with them, and sang hymns and prayed with them the whole time to comfort them and voluntarily died with them. I can't remember the details (I wish I could). These are the kind of true stories we should all hear more about - inspiring, uplifting, and humbling.

[diamond6]

There was also the priest, whose name escapes me, (I want to say Fr. Maximillian Kolbe??) traded places with a jew sentenced to die in a camp. He was later cannonized a saint!

[Judith Anne]

Yes, that was Fr. Kolbe. It's quite a story, if you ever read it...

Bump for the hero priest.

[dansangel]

Thank you for the ping.

May God wrap His loving arms around this brave man for all of eternity. This is what true selflessness is all about.

[Romulus]

The storminess of the Adriatic was proverbial in antiquity. See Horace's ode "Donec gratus eram tibi" (III, ix).

[eastsider]

Good call, Romulus!

Donec gratus
Horace (65 - 8 B.C.)

donec gratus eram tibi,
nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae
cervici iuvenis dabat,
Persarum vigui rege beatior.

donec non alia magis
arsisti, neque erat Lydia post Chloen,
multi Lydia nominis
Romana vigui clarior Ilia.

me nunc Thressa Chloe regit,
dulces docta modos et citharae sciens,
pro qua non metuam mori,
si parcent animae fata supersiti.

me torret face mutua
Thurini Calais filius Ornyti,
pro quo bis patiar mori,
si parcent puero fata supersiti.

quid si prisca redit Venus
diductosque iugo cogit aeneo,
si flava excutitur Chloe
reiectaeque patet ianua Lydiae?

quamquam sidere pulchrior
ille est, tu levior cortice et improbo
iracundior Hadria,
tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.

(You might be interested in David Ferry's recent translations (1997) in The Odes of Horace.)

[Romulus]

What's funny is that we have no way of knowing if this was a "good" priest at all. It's entirely possible that he was a very bad priest, a lost soul headed nowhere but down, who in the last moments of his life received a terrible, transforming grace. The Lord's ways are not our own; in his determination to save as many sinners as possible he may well have known that the only way this fellow was ever going to make it was by flooding him with the grace he'd need to make an offering of his life in this good cause. It's the sort of ending Flannery O'Connor would have loved.

[Romulus]

And Requiescat to Herman Taylor, the recently-deceased classics professor who introduced me to Horace almost 30 years ago.

[Delbert]

Probably will get at least a directors job or perhaps a V.P.
position.

[eastsider]

W&L Community Mourns the Loss of Professor Emeritus

[VOA]

What's funny is that we have no way of knowing if this was a "good" priest at all.

Agreed. Whatever his life, it sure was a grand exit.

[VOA]

You write as though his death were a punishment, instead of a reward.

I wasn't clear; I was giving what I suspect more than a few non-observant people might
think in view of the two situations.

The perished priest did a good thing; my best guess is he ascended.

[aculeus]

Here's the Telegraph's full article:


Italian priest who died as he saved drowning children hailed as hero
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 01/08/2003)


A parish priest who drowned after saving up to seven children from the sea was being hailed as a hero across Italy yesterday.

Padre Stefano Garzegno plunged into the Adriatic - still wearing his cassock - to rescue some of the children on a parish outing with him after they began calling for help.

The children, altar boys and choir members aged 12-14, were swimming despite rough conditions on their trip to the resort of Termoli from the inland town of Bojano.

Although the water was shallow, the area is prone to treacherous currents and the children suddenly found themselves in deeper water and being taken out to sea.

Fr Stefano, 44, who was described as an expert swimmer and a strapping man, first rescued one group of three or four children.

He then went back to get the rest, before collapsing and disappearing in the waves. When he was brought out he was already dead.

It was thought that the priest had fainted from exhaustion or suffered a heart attack due to the strain and that his lungs then filled with water.

Local people and administrators in Bojano attributed the rescue of all seven children to the priest, although some reports suggested that he saved five.

Earlier trips organised by the padre had generally been to the mountains, which were his passion. But this summer he decided to take them to the sea for the first time, saying: "We've seen enough of the mountains for a while."

Roberto Colacillo, the mayor of Bojano, where Fr Stefano had been the parish priest for little more than a year, said it was thanks to the clergyman that "seven of our children are still alive".

He had "died a true hero", he said, and would be remembered as such.

The mayor said he would declare an official state of mourning. An order of merit would also be created in the priest's honour and a street named after him.

"He was an expert swimmer, though he was out of practice," Mr Colacillo said. "When he saw the children were in trouble he did not hestitate for an instant.

"He saved seven of them and then collapsed after bringing the last one ashore." Throughout the agricultural town, which has a population of 8,500, people were in a state of disbelief at the news, talking of the priest as if he were one of the family.

The clergyman's elderly father, Pietro - who like his son is from Verona, from where he and his wife had recently moved to Bojano to be with him - described him as a "pied piper figure" for the young.

"In the year since he came to Bojano he became loved by all," a 51-year-old parishioner said.

"He was much appreciated for his work with the children. It was for them that he gave his life."

"It seems incredible that such an accident could have happened," said a 19-year-old churchgoer. "He was a powerfully built man."

In the pastry shop opposite the Sant'Erasmo church in Via Episcopio, Signora Elvira wiped away tears and said: "I last saw him the other day on his bicycle.

"But I didn't think of waving. I didn't know I wouldn't see him again.

"He was like a breath of fresh air. He was always smiling and loved the children, and above all he knew how to make them smile too."

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