Africa Mission is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, 2012. Daniele Vignola, who has been a collaborator with Don Vittorio since 1972, recounts how this journey of charity began: a beautiful testimony about the early days of our solidarity work and the missionary vocation that inspired Don Vittorio.

The opportunity to meet him came in June 1972. Thus began my adventure with Mr. Vittorio, who at that time was gathering support to organize his second group trip to Uganda scheduled for August. On April 15, his 46th birthday, inspired and encouraged by his bishop, Monsignor Enrico Manfredini, Vittorio established a small association in Piacenza: Uganda Mission Safari Club, with the goal of "raising awareness by visiting missions and providing direct and immediate help to the missions," as stated in the opening lines of the charter. The foundation of the association justified what Vittorio had already written at that time: "Missionary days are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain from parishes. The preaching of such days is getting older, repetitive, and less effective, even when it is intelligent and lively. The sermons, even the best ones, go in one ear and out the other, slipping away even for the most sensitive people. The offerings collected on such days, in addition to being always inadequate, leave the donors unchanged. Now let’s ask ourselves: is it more valuable to collect money or to change people? We place the person at the center of everything and offer them an experience that changes them profoundly. We are confident that the offerings will come by themselves and abundantly, as the past has shown us. For us, the experience that changes is seeing the African Church and the work of evangelization, and social promotion by our missionaries."

However, these were turbulent times for Uganda where Vittorio wanted to operate. In January of the previous year, Idi Amin Dada, the army chief of staff, had deposed the then president Milton Apollo Obote, taking advantage of his absence, as Obote had traveled to Singapore to attend the Commonwealth conference being held there at that time. After a brief stop in Kenya, whose government wanted to remain neutral and denied him asylum, Obote fled to Tanzania where he was welcomed by his friend President Julius Nyerere. As unfortunately often happens in these circumstances, Amin, fearing the claims of the Lango, the ethnic group to which Obote belonged, began persecuting them with mass killings. To get an idea of what was happening, a passage from a publication that appeared in Italy in 1977 is explicit. It is a profile of Amin written by journalist Erich Wiedemann, who was then the Central Africa correspondent for the German weekly Der Spiegel. It reads: "The rainy season of 1971, which coincided with the peak of the liquidation of opponents, was an unprecedented feast for the Nile and Lake Victoria crocodiles. At the mouth of the Nile near Jinja, the reptiles were so full of human flesh that the corpses they now despised choked some of the water inflows to the Owen Falls Power Station. It was necessary to use divers who in a single day pulled out thirty corpses." Everything at that time advised against a stay in Uganda.

Evidently, however, Vittorio had received assurances from the telephone conversations he was having with missionaries, as in February 1972 some people from Piacenza followed him on a first exploratory trip to Uganda where they would be hosted by Monsignor Cipriano Kihangire, bishop of the Diocese of Gulu, a town in the north of the country. Monsignor Cipriano had met Don Enrico Manfredini, then parish priest of the Basilica of St. Vittore in Varese, during the Vatican II Council sessions where Don Enrico had been invited as a parish auditor. Monsignor Cipriano was then invited to Varese along with the young bishop of Lira, Monsignor Cesare Asili, and it was there that their friendship with Don Enrico and Vittorio, who was helping Don Enrico as the treasurer of the basilica, was solidified. In Varese, where he was born, Vittorio helped Don Enrico during those years after managing, with his mother Carmelina, a well-known restaurant still in operation today, and above the entrance of which still stands the sign "da Vittorio." In 1969, Don Enrico was appointed by Pope Paul VI as bishop of Piacenza and asked Vittorio to follow him to serve as his administrative secretary. On that first trip to Uganda at the beginning of 1972, Vittorio was accompanied by Don Francesco Cattadori, then personal secretary to Monsignor Manfredini, Surveyor Paolo Scaravaggi, who had been a collaborator of Vittorio from the very beginning, and Don Enrico Gallarati, a Piacenza priest who would stay in the Kitgum mission.

It was during conversations in Gulu with Monsignor Cipriano that the idea of founding that small association, which came to life in April of the same year, was born in Vittorio’s heart. Shortly after, Vittorio began organizing the first real group trip which took place in July. I participated in the following trip in August and, upon returning to Piacenza, I started collaborating with Vittorio. We had just inaugurated our new office, beautiful and comfortable; the first headquarters of Uganda Mission was simply Vittorio’s office in the bishop's palace in Piacenza. All the organizational activities of the association took place in that office; itineraries that the groups would follow were planned there; contact was maintained with various organizations and parishes in Piacenza and especially in Lombardy, where Vittorio and his bishop could count on numerous acquaintances to organize meetings to explain the goals that Uganda Mission aimed to achieve.

At that time, technological support for secretarial work was very limited; there were no computers, printers, or photocopiers, and all the informational material had to be prepared by typing it out in multiple copies. For printing addresses, we used a rice paste labeler, which invariably jammed, so the work had to be completed manually. During the trips we took, in addition to the money collected by Vittorio at various meetings and distributed to the missions we visited, we also carried numerous suitcases, mostly filled with food supplies.

Over the years, hundreds of black suitcases were transported to Uganda, and Vittorio earned the friendship of a leather goods store owner, who certainly did not get rich from it. Vittorio had not studied, but he knew how to handle finances very well and naturally did not miss the chance to use this "talent" even when he had to rent containers or cargo planes instead of buying suitcases. I remember him sitting at a small table, first in the Piacenza seminary and later in a room of the bishop’s palace, directing the packing of the suitcases, taking careful note of their contents. The ceremony also involved Roberto Montescani and Credo Groppi, who, along with Monsignor Enrico Manfredini, Vittorio Pastori, Don Francesco Cattadori, and Paolo Scaravaggi, were among the founders of Uganda Mission Safari Club. Roberto and Credo were truly tireless collaborators of Vittorio, who, as often happened, took advantage of their availability. Roberto frequented the bishop’s residence because he helped his mother in the kitchen; he thus had the chance to confide in her, and once he expressed discomfort due to Vittorio’s constant insistence that he stay close even for entire days. Roberto’s wife had had twins, so his presence was needed elsewhere. Mrs. Maria told her son the bishop, who "lifted Vittorio off the ground," as he himself expressed it when he told me the story, and Vittorio, in turn, took it out on poor Roberto, who was only guilty of expressing a perfectly legitimate need.

During the first group trips, the reference base in Uganda was always Monsignor Cipriano’s residence in Gulu; we rarely found suitable conditions to stay elsewhere. Back then, we ventured as far as Moroto and other missions in Karamoja, packed into a minibus driven by John Bosco, Monsignor Cipriano’s driver. In August 1972, we also had our adventure with the Ugandan military. We were headed to Bibia, a mission not far from the border with Sudan, and our driver ignored a checkpoint, probably made up of a simple log placed across the road. We were overtaken by two soldiers on motorcycles who stopped us and ordered us to follow them to their command, where we were forced to sit on the ground. Vittorio was allowed, given his size, to rest only one knee. He looked like a hen surrounded by her chicks! Today we can laugh about it, but at the time, we were facing young men who had only grown physically but wielded automatic rifles. Fortunately, John Bosco managed to make them understand who we were and why we were in Uganda, and so they let us go. However, the episode was a sign that the situation was becoming more critical.

Soon, Amin would expel the entire population of British Asian origin; in September 1972, the dictator had to fend off an attempt by Obote to invade Uganda from Tanzania, which failed miserably; in early December, fifty-one missionaries, including priests, nuns, and laypeople from various congregations, who did not have proper residence permits, were expelled; it seemed imminent that all European and North American missionaries would be expelled; Amin declared that the only foreigners Uganda needed were technicians, not priests.

This situation forced Vittorio to cancel the group trip planned for November and December. He went alone and, among other things, attended the consecration of the cathedral in Lira, sitting a few meters from Amin. With determination, Vittorio rescheduled the group's departure for December 27. 

The night before, he received a phone call from Kampala from someone who, for security reasons, did not reveal their identity. However, Vittorio recognized the voice of Father John Scalabrini, then vicar to Monsignor Cipriano, who informed him that, unexpectedly, white people were no longer allowed entry into Uganda. The next day, I accompanied a disheartened Vittorio to the airport, where he was forced to inform the same friends who had already had to cancel their November trip that this departure had to be canceled as well. Meanwhile, on October 28-29, the first gathering of Uganda Mission members was held at Villa Regina Mundi in Pianazze, in the high province of Piacenza. All subsequent meetings of the association's members would be held at this location until Monsignor Manfredini was bishop in Piacenza. Members were those who had participated in at least one group trip. This first meeting saw the presence of forty-one people; practically everyone who had been with us in Uganda up to that point. On December 8, 1972, the third anniversary of his appointment in Piacenza, Monsignor Manfredini blessed the new Uganda Mission headquarters, located fifty meters from Vittorio’s residence. A small space had become available with a window on the street and also had a small back room. We finally had the chance to be more visible. I remember the Saturday afternoons we spent there. We had a 16mm film projector and some footage provided by the Comboni missionaries. With wooden strips, I had made a small frame covered with translucent tracing paper used by surveyors at that time to draw their plans. The resulting screen, placed against the window, along with a speaker set up in front of the entrance, allowed passersby to view the films and then come in to ask for information. After the forced cancellation of the last two trips of 1972, it seemed that everything might come to an end.

But Vittorio thought otherwise. In that moment, he found the incentive to change the travel itineraries, directing them towards other churches and African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania. This was why Uganda Mission Safari Club became Africa Mission Safari Club. Vittorio's determination to pursue his plan led him, in January 1973, to embark on a solo exploratory trip to Kenya and Tanzania, places he had never been. Thanks to the kindness of the missionaries he met, who offered to accompany him, as well as through adventurous transfers by taxi and train, he became aware of the most urgent needs of the missionaries and the local clergy in those countries. Vittorio’s keen observation and innate ability to understand people allowed him to return to Italy with a clear idea of where and how his association should operate. That same year, three trips to Kenya and four to Tanzania were organized, often simultaneously. The groups were led, as needed, by Vittorio himself, Enrica Pezzoli from Gemonio (VA), and Carlo Manfredini, the bishop's brother. That year, I went to Kenya, where on August 19, at the church of Marsabit, Monsignor Enrico Manfredini blessed my sister’s wedding. Naturally, the meal was organized by Vittorio. In August 1974, I also led a group to Tanzania; I then passed through Kenya where Vittorio had completed his tour, and we returned to Italy together. Among my group was a young woman from Piacenza who on December 21 of the following year at Villa Regina Mundi, would become my wife in front of Don Francesco Cattadori, then still secretary to Monsignor Manfredini. The date of December 21 was chosen because on the 23rd, Vittorio would be departing for Kenya, so I took the opportunity for my honeymoon. However, Vittorio always harbored the desire to return to Uganda. Already in the summer of 1975, he made another attempt, but once again, the political situation did not show the necessary signs of security, so, taking advantage of the contacts he had developed in Kenya in previous years, he redirected the group he had assembled to Kenya at the last moment. On Christmas Day 1976, in Awach, Diocese of Gulu, Vittorio was ordained deacon by Monsignor Cipriano. He wore a white linen chasuble made from a sheet brought as a dowry by his mother Carmelina and embroidered by her. "I wanted to be a deacon to deal with God," Vittorio would declare some years later during a conversation with Father Piero Gheddo. "I did it because deacons, in the early days of the Church, provided for the table and the poor. I understood immediately that at my age I could no longer learn the dialects of Uganda or be a missionary in a village. My was a special vocation: that of the traveler who establishes a bridge between Italian opulence and Ugandan poverty." However, the diaconate was only the first step towards the priesthood to which Vittorio had always aspired since the day, as a young man, in front of the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Basilica of San Vittore in Varese, he had promised he would celebrate his first Mass there.

He kept the promise many years later when, in the sports hall of Varese, where in November 1969 Monsignor Manfredini was ordained bishop, Vittorio, still by the hands of Monsignor Cipriano, became a priest of Africa incardinated in the Diocese of Gulu. It was September 15, 1984, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Vittorio was then 58 years old. After 1976, the situation in Uganda continued with alternating events until April 13, 1979, when the Tanzanian army, supported by the rebels of the UNLA (Uganda National Liberation Army), invaded Uganda from the south and deposed Amin. This latest political instability, which definitively ended the group trips with luggage, was compounded by the drama of cholera, famine, and drought, which particularly affected the already troubled Karamoja region. To address this new dramatic emergency, the Friends of Uganda Committee was established within Africa Mission. From May 24, 1979 (the date of the first flight, just 41 days after the Tanzanian army’s invasion) until 1982, thanks also to the intervention of Honorable Giulio Andreotti and the numerous volunteers who helped him throughout Italy, Vittorio managed to establish an air bridge from Piacenza to Uganda, which resulted in 43 cargo flights carrying food, other essential goods, as well as agricultural, mechanical, and medical equipment. In addition to air transport, there were also maritime transports of less urgent materials which were unloaded in Mombasa, Kenya, and then transported to Uganda by land. All truck convoys that took aid from Entebbe airport to the north saw Vittorio sitting on the lead vehicle.

It is also worth noting that major international organizations, for security reasons, limited their intervention in the area around Kampala. It is estimated that Vittorio managed to distribute about 4000 tons of goods, mainly in Uganda but also to refugees in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Sudan, where more than 150,000 Ugandans had gathered, fleeing from Amin’s disbanded soldiers and from an occupied Kampala. After several short-lived presidential terms, Milton Obote returned to power in 1980, initiating a period of retribution against Amin’s supporters. But that is another story; the 1980s arrived, and with them, Cooperation and Development allowed Vittorio to direct his energies towards the realization of new projects. He left to Africa Mission the task of raising awareness about mission issues that he had entrusted to it in 1972 when everything began. My knowledge of Vittorio did not follow the path of those who were struck by one of his powerful sermons. I absorbed him slowly day by day, accompanying him on his trips to Africa and Italy and during office work. I appreciated his determination to grow his movement despite countless difficulties, supported by unwavering faith, but I also accepted his flaws simply because they were part of him. Vittorio was not a man of half measures; you were either completely attracted to him or you rejected him entirely.

In his wandering, he always showed attention to all the people he encountered, even in casual meetings. I remember an episode that might seem minor but I consider significant. It was December when Vittorio asked me to accompany him to Uganda to resume the contacts that had been forcibly interrupted. It was just the two of us in the car that Monsignor Cipriano had provided, along with the driver John Bosco. We ended up visiting a missionary who was hosting relatives who had come from Italy to spend Christmas with him. It was a couple with their twelve-year-old son. We had a pleasant conversation with them, and at the end, Vittorio asked me to open a suitcase where I would find a torrone to give to the boy. I rummaged through the suitcase and finally saw something I recognized as a torrone only because I could read "Sperlari" on the wrapper, but which, due to the jostling of the car on that hot day, had taken on the twisted shape of the space left by the other items it had been traveling with. Nevertheless, it was still a torrone brought from Italy to Uganda, and the next day would be Christmas.