He passed away in the Casa di Rancio di Lecco at the age of 97. Long a trainer of future missionaries in the United States, in the early seventies he was alongside Msgr. Pirovano in guiding PIME’s path after the Council. Starting from 1984, he was responsible for the institute’s library for 25 years, making it a point of reference for studies on the mission and the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America
Father Lorenzo Chiesa died yesterday in the Giovanni Mazzucconi House in Rancio di Lecco, who turned 97 last month. He was one of the oldest missionaries, who had also held roles of great responsibility in the institute, especially at the beginning of the seventies, in the season of rethinking of the PIME ministry in the light of the Second Vatican Council.
Originally from Pogliano Milanese, on the outskirts of the Lombard capital, Father Chiesa was born on 18 October 1926. At the age of 16 – in 1942 at the height of the war – he entered the PIME seminary in Monza, where he attended high school, and then moved on to Milan for theological studies. He was ordained a priest in Milan by card. Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster on 26 June 1949. Due to his intellectual gifts, his superiors assigned him to continue his studies: he thus obtained a license in philosophy from the Gregorian University, one in dogmatic theology from the Theological Faculty of Venegono and a degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Sacred Heart. A wealth of knowledge that he put at the service of the training of future missionaries first in the PIME Seminary in Milan and then – starting from 1956 – in his destination in the United States, where for 15 years he followed the PIME training institutions in Newark and Maryglade .
In 1971 he was recalled to Italy to be part of the Central Commission which in 1971 prepared the update Chapter, the profound revision of PIME’s path in the light of the missionary vision expressed by the Second Vatican Council. In that Assembly he was elected alongside Msgr. Aristide Pirovano as general assistant, a position to which he was reconfirmed in 1977. In those years he had the opportunity to visit many missions in the various continents, but he also had to face the delicate period of youth protest: for a period he was also called to personally take on the seminar guide.
After completing his service in the central management in Rome in 1984 he took on a new task for him: he became responsible for Library of the PIME missionary center in Milan. And even in his role – which he held until 2009 – he brought all his depth. It was with Father Chiesa, in fact, that the PIME Library became the point of reference it is today, with its catalog of tens of thousands of titles on the mission and on the history and life of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America which represent a precious treasure for many students and researchers.
Having concluded this service for reasons of age (but not his passionate closeness to the PIME Library), Father Chiesa continued to reside at the PIME Center in Milan until 2017, when his now precarious health recommended moving to the House of Elderly Missionaries in Rancio of Lecco. His funeral will be held right here on Saturday 18 November at 3pm. His remains will then be buried in the PIME missionaries’ cemetery at Villa Grugana in Merate (LC).