Fr. Giambattista Sacchetti, scalabrinian

(Gropparello, Piacenza, 10 December 1918 - 6 January 1992, Arco, Trento)

"The eulogy offered by Fr. Gianfausto Rosoli on behalf of a confrere endowed with "moral and intellectual virtues"

Fr. Giovanni Battista Sacchetti passed away on the day of the Epiphany in 1992, in the dim light of his hospital room, hooked up on that machine which had reduced his week to 3 days, but had given him the promise of keeping him in our midst for many years. Those were years of suffering, as usual when you are affected by a grave illness, but at the same time years of striking peacefulness and enlightened lesson for all, because of his example while suffering, his willingness and desire to live to the end the gift of life, to keep interested to the things and values he had always cherished, close to the people who loved him.
We remember him just as he was: a friend, a teacher, a discrete guide for many people, a wise man who always gave intelligent and prudent suggestions, marked always by his humane and bright personality.
Regarding his moral and spiritual virtues, as a priest and faith filled man, capable of interpreting and following God's will, often so ancient and unpredictable just like love, many people have already expressed their opinion. We will never reflect enough or learn his Christian way of accepting his sufferings. Though burdened by his pain and suffering, that only his close friends knew of, he never succumbed to any complaint or despair, but accepted everything as God's will. Certainly, many people appreciated and kept him in high esteem as a priest and man, so many people, many more people that today can express today a sign of gratitude and respect.
Among the many people that owe him something, the very small community of the Center of Studies in Rome owes him a deep and sincere gratitude, for this institution has always been the one he loved more than anything else. He created it at the beginning and then cared for it with study and intelligence, at times with anxiety. At the CSER he spent his most fruitful years, from 1963 to 1974, and gave his best moral and spiritual qualities. After been elected as a member of the General Administration in 1974 and despite his prolonged illness since 1978 that caused him to interrupt his systematic contribution to CSER, he always followed "his" Center and "his" magazine, by sending messages of encouragement, support, and some other stimulating and innovating perspectives.
I would like to remember especially Fr. Sacchetti's intellectual and moral virtues. First of all, he was a very open-minded person, shown on various occasions and during different meetings, as a director of a magazine of cultural and broad spectrum. He was a man open to dialogue, respecting other people's creed or ideology, but never giving up his own identity. The magazine "Studi Emigrazione" grew in this environment of cultural dialogue, back then quite unusual, beyond the common and narrow boundaries of those days: making this magazine an international one, since 1974, was just a logical consequence. Besides his dialogue and broad views, he always made a serious scientific effort to keep the magazine and the Center from easy criticism or external pressure of a pastoral approach quite misunderstood.
Fr. Sacchetti joined together these qualities with a natural gift of communication, especially because of his great intellectual versatility and a pleasant style as a journalist always direct and concrete. He never followed the absurd trends, in order to direct the important cultural and political debates to a basic level, and better the migration debate, while the other political organisms followed other ways, often contrary to the culture.
The most important trait in P. Sacchetti is his love for friendship, that he cherished until the last days of his life, always available to meet his friends. Many people owe him his ongoing attention and gentleness in his messages. He was greatly devoted to poetry, during the last years of his illness, in order to forget the long hours of dialysis and also to communicate more easily with God and his friends, in a very spontaneous and simple way, just like the simplicity of his rhyme and verses, that he always considered as compositions of his younger years.

Excerpt from GIOVANNI BATTISTA SACCHETTI, Testimonianze saggi poesie, (Giovanni Terragni ed.), Autorinediti, Napoli 2009.

For more information and copies of the volume please contact Fr. Giovanni Terragni: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Written by G. Bentoglio
Friday, 05 February 2010 22:29