Vatican prefect pays tribute to St. Justin de Jacobis

August 02, 2011

Archbishop Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, paid tribute to St. Justin de Jacobis (1800-60) in a homily that concluded a year-long commemoration of the sesquicentennial of his death.

The saint, known as the Apostle of Abyssinia, labored to bring Ethiopian Orthodox Christians--in schism since the Council of Chalcedon in 451--into full communion with the Holy See. The saint’s efforts later gave rise to the formation of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church of the Alexandrian rite.

After recalling the saint’s life, Archbishop Filoni said that “nearly 12 million Africans risk dying due to famine and drought that has hit the Horn of Africa. This was the land much loved by St. Justin De Jacobis.”

The prefect exhorted “the children of a world that is often wasteful to share their resources with those who undergo the humiliation of malnutrition.”

 

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Further information:

• "In the land loved by Saint Justin De Jacobis 12 million risk dying of hunger", Prefect Filoni recalled in his homily for the 150 years since the death of the evangelizing Saint of Ethiopia (Fides)
• Justin De Jacobis (Vincentian Online Library)