Saint Justin de Jacobis (1800-1860)

Birth in San Fele, into a devout and numerous family

Giustino Sebastiano Pasquale de Jacobis was born on 9 October 1800 in San Fele, a small mountain town in the province of Potenza, in the Kingdom of Naples.^[11][12] He was, according to the Italian biographers, the seventh of fourteen children, born to devout and well-off parents.^[13] As a child of precocious gravity and judgment, he was nicknamed in his family "the little old man" — a character trait his future confreres would recognise again in the reflective and methodical adult he became.^[14]

Entry among the Lazarists of Naples (1818) and formation

The young Giustino made his way to Naples where, under the spiritual direction of a Carmelite, his vocation matured.^[15] On 17 October 1818, he entered the Congregation of the Mission — the Lazarists or Vincentians, founded two centuries earlier by Saint Vincent de Paul for the evangelization of rural areas and the formation of the clergy.^[16][17] He pronounced his vows on 18 October 1820.^[18] He was ordained priest on 12 June 1824, in Brindisi Cathedral^{[19][20][21][22]} — though the official notice of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives 18 June instead^[23].

The fifteen years following his ordination were a long apprenticeship in ordinary apostolic life: parish missions and preached retreats in the dioceses of Apulia — Oria, Monopoli — then the office of superior at Lecce, before becoming, in 1836, director of the seminarians and superior of the Lazarist provincial house in Naples.^[24][25] This period trained him in popular preaching, spiritual direction and the government of a community — skills that would prove decisive when, alone thousands of kilometres from Rome, he had to found a Church.

The Naples cholera epidemic (1836-1837)

In 1836-1837, a terrible cholera epidemic struck Naples. Justin de Jacobis and his Lazarist confreres devoted themselves unstintingly to the sick, "out all day, and well into the night", according to the testimony preserved by his Vincentian confreres.^[26] This experience of total devotion in the service of the dying, in a city under sanitary siege, forged in him a physical and moral endurance that would never leave him — an unwitting preparation for the privations awaiting him in Abyssinia.

The call of Abyssinia (1838-1839)

In 1838, while he was provincial superior, Cardinal Franzoni, prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda, made known to him the immense needs of the mission of Abyssinia — the old name under which Europe designated Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea.^[27] Since the expulsion of the last Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, no stable Catholic presence had survived in this most ancient Christian kingdom of Africa, evangelized as early as the 4th century by Saint Frumentius but attached ever since to the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria and cut off from Rome — a broader dossier treated in Catholic Missions in Africa.

Appointed apostolic prefect of Abyssinia and neighbouring territories, Justin de Jacobis left Naples on 24 May 1839, with a first companion, Father Luigi Montuori; the future explorer-missionary Giuseppe Sapeto would soon join them.^[28] He landed at Massawa, on the Red Sea, in the autumn of 1839, before heading inland.^[29][30]

The 17th-century Jesuit failure, a counter-model

Two centuries before Justin de Jacobis, the Jesuits had attempted to rally the Ethiopian Church to Rome. Father Pedro Páez had won the confidence of Negus Susenyos, converted to Catholicism shortly before his death in 1622; but his successor, Patriarch Afonso Mendes, had imposed the Latin rite with brutal rigidity, clashing head-on with liturgical traditions more than a millennium old. The popular reaction was so violent that Catholicism was driven from the country for two centuries. Justin de Jacobis knew this history and drew the opposite lesson from it: evangelizing Ethiopia does not mean Latinizing it, but making a Catholic Church faithful to its own liturgical heritage grow from within.

Welcomed by Ras Oubié in Tigray

It was in the province of Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, that Justin de Jacobis established his first bases, with the permission of Ras (Dejazmach) Oubié, lord of Tigray and Semen.^[31] He settled first at Adwa, the region's old religious capital, before fixing the heart of his work further south, at Guala.^[32][33]

"Becoming an Abyssinian with the Abyssinians"

The most momentous decision of Justin de Jacobis's entire mission can be summed up in a formula his biographers capture well: he became "an Abyssinian with the Abyssinians".^[34] Concretely, this meant:

• Adopting the white, simple Ethiopian monastic habit, and a frugal diet in keeping with the customs of the country;^[35]
• Learning the local languages — Amharic, Tigrinya, and Ge'ez, the classical liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church — to the point of composing his own catechetical works in Amharic;^[36]
• Celebrating according to the Ethiopian rite (Alexandrian/Ge'ez rite), and not the Latin rite, in the local churches, often by night and clandestinely, since the law of the land then threatened Catholic priests with death;^[37]
• Requiring converted clerics to remain in their rite of origin — absolutely refusing any Latinization, contrary to the method that had doomed the Jesuit mission.^[38][39]

"The door of the heart is the mouth; the key of the heart is speech." — Justin de Jacobis, principle of his method of evangelization through closeness and dialogue^[40]

This intuition — that unity with Rome in no way demands liturgical uniformity, but on the contrary preserves and honours diversity — is precisely what the Catholic Church today recognizes as the just doctrine of the Eastern Catholic Churches, developed in The Eastern Catholic Churches. Justin de Jacobis was, on Ethiopian soil, one of its most lucid and courageous 19th-century artisans.

Marian devotion and first fruits

From his first year at Adwa, Justin de Jacobis distributed Miraculous Medals to all those he met, patiently explaining that Mary is the Mother of God — an ancient point of theological friction with certain Ethiopian currents.^[41] His intense Marian devotion earned him, among the people, a nickname that has remained famous: "Abba Yaqob Zä-Maryam", "Father Jacob (James) of Mary".^[42] This nickname, which links his gallicized first name (Jacobis evoking Jacob/James) to his filial attachment to the Virgin, says on its own the place Marian piety held in his method of evangelization.

Guala, hearth of the future Ethiopian Catholic Church

Around 1845-1846, Justin de Jacobis founded at Guala, in Tigray, a seminary called the College of the Immaculate (Collegio dell'Immacolata), destined to form an authentic indigenous clergy of the Ge'ez rite.^[43][44] The choice was no small matter: rather than multiplying Italian priests, whose ranks the climate and diseases were decimating, Justin de Jacobis wagered — as Saint Daniel Comboni would do a generation later in Central Africa with his motto "Save Africa through Africa" — on the formation of Abyssinians by Abyssinians.

The decisive meeting with Ghebre-Michael (1843-1844)

In September 1843, during a pilgrimage, Justin de Jacobis met an already elderly and learned Ethiopian Orthodox monk, Ghebre-Michael, born around 1791 in Gojjam, professed since 1813, travelling the country to investigate the relaxation of monastic discipline.^[45] After a long theological exchange, Justin de Jacobis received him into full communion with the Catholic Church in February 1844 — a gesture which brought, in his wake, the conversion of six other monks.^[46]

Ghebre-Michael became Justin de Jacobis's closest collaborator: together they wrote a catechism in the Ge'ez language and laid the foundations of the Guala seminary.^[47] Justin de Jacobis ordained him priest on 1 January 1851.^[48] This spiritual and intellectual companionship between the Italian Lazarist and the Abyssinian monk sums up, on its own, Justin de Jacobis's entire missionary programme: not replacing one clergy with another, but bringing forth, from within an ancient Eastern Church, a full communion with Rome.

"I want to devote my whole life to this Church of Abyssinia which the Lord has given me to serve, in its own tradition, not in ours." — Guiding principle attributed to Justin de Jacobis by his biographers, summing up his missionary method^[49]

Appointed Bishop of Nilopolis (1847)

The Roman authorities, informed of the fruits of the mission, decided to give Abyssinia a resident bishop. Justin de Jacobis was appointed titular Bishop of Nilopolis and vicar apostolic of Abyssinia on 6 July 1847.^[50] As the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia already noted, he even refused the episcopal dignity until it was finally imposed on him in 1849^[51] — a reluctance confirmed by the Vincentian notice, according to which he yielded only against his will^[52]. But the local political and religious situation made any public ceremony impossible: Ethiopian law, under the influence of the newly installed Coptic patriarch, now threatened Catholic priests with death.

A consecration by night, in the midst of war (January 1849)

The episcopal consecration took place at Massawa, in the night of 7 to 8 January 1849, at the hands of the Capuchin Bishop Guglielmo Massaia — himself vicar apostolic of the Gallas and a future cardinal, ordained bishop in Rome on 24 May 1846.^[53][54] The ceremony unfolded in extreme conditions: the town was plunged into open war between Abyssinians and Egyptians, and the safety of the two missionaries was guaranteed by no one.^[55]

For lack of means, two stacked crates served as an altar, two Abyssinian priests who understood no Latin served as witnesses, and Massaia and de Jacobis passed from hand to hand a single mitre and a single pastoral staff, for lack of owning a complete set each.^[56] This material destitution, striking for the consecration of a bishop, says everything about the precariousness — and the determination — of the first modern Catholic hierarchy of Abyssinia.

"In an atmosphere of secrecy, Giustino de Jacobis was ordained bishop", in the words of the Italian biographers reporting the nocturnal ceremony at Massawa.^[57]

Patriarch Abuna Salama, artisan of the repression

As early as 1841, a new Coptic metropolitan, Abuna Salama (Salama III), had been brought to Ethiopia at the request of the same Ras Oubié who had welcomed Justin de Jacobis.^[58] But Salama, partly educated in a Protestant school in Cairo, showed himself hostile to the Catholic presence from the outset.^[59] Under his influence, the Catholic residences of Tigray suffered repeated raids; the pressure on converts and on Abyssinian clerics rallied to Rome grew steadily through the 1840s and early 1850s. The Lazarist historian Luigi Mezzadri recalls that, to understand Justin de Jacobis, one must revisit the whole history of relations between Catholicism and Ethiopian Christianity — a Church whose existence predates the Council of Chalcedon.^[60]

The martyrdom of Ghebre-Michael (1855)

The tragic turning point came in the mid-1850s. Imprisoned with other Catholics, Ghebre-Michael was subjected to torture to force him to renounce his Catholic faith and sign a repudiation of the Council of Chalcedon — the very Christology that distinguishes Catholic communion from the non-Chalcedonian Eastern Churches.^[61] He refused. Under Emperor Tewodros II, newly crowned, he was dragged in chains in the sovereign's wake on his campaigns, until he died of exhaustion and ill-treatment, under a cedar tree, by the roadside, on 30 July 1855 — five years, almost to the day, before the death of Justin de Jacobis himself.^[62] His body was never found.

"Drive Abuna Jacob away, but do not kill him: he is a saint." — Words reported of an Ethiopian dignitary to Emperor Tewodros II, concerning Justin de Jacobis^[63]

Ghebre-Michael was beatified on 3 October 1926 by Pius XI — the first of Justin de Jacobis's Ethiopian companions to be raised to the altars, and the seal of the blood shed upon the founder's work.^[64] His fidelity unto death to the dogma of Chalcedon, while remaining fully rooted in the Ethiopian monastic tradition, forcefully illustrates what Justin de Jacobis had always taught: communion with Rome is non-negotiable, but it demands the abandonment of no legitimate liturgical heritage.

The table below summarizes the main stages of the repression the mission endured between 1841 and 1860.

Tewodros II bans Catholicism

Once firmly established on the throne, Emperor Tewodros II drew ever closer to Abuna Salama and hardened his religious policy. In 1860, he formally banned Catholicism in his states and had Justin de Jacobis arrested, keeping him prisoner for several months.^[65][66] The bishop, already weakened by twenty years of privation, fevers and chronic dysentery, was then subjected to a forced march towards the south of present-day Eritrea, in the direction of Halai, where he strove as best he could to maintain the remnants of his college and his little Church.^[67]

Death at Eidale (31 July 1860)

Exhausted, Justin de Jacobis died on 31 July 1860, in the desert valley of Eidale (sometimes transcribed Egdà or Alghedien according to the sources), near Massawa, on the Red Sea coast, in present-day Eritrea.^[68][69] The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia specifies the place: the plain of Eydele, between Mounts Chedene and Hamamo, as he was travelling to Halay to recover his health.^[70] He was fifty-nine years old. The sources differ slightly on the numerical record of twenty years of mission: some speak of about seven thousand Catholic faithful in five or six small communities at the time of his death, others advance a cumulative total of about twelve thousand conversions over the whole period.^[71][72] This disagreement over figures, common for missions of this scale in the 19th century, changes nothing essential: an Eastern-rite Catholic Church, fragile but real, had been born on this land where two centuries of silence had followed the Jesuit failure.

"God chose him to be a master even more by example than by word." — Bishop Guglielmo Massaia, on Justin de Jacobis^[73]

Venerable (1935) then blessed (1939)

The beatification process had been introduced as early as 13 July 1904^[74], and the cause then progressed relatively swiftly for the time. He was declared venerable on 28 July 1935 by Pius XI, then beatified on 25 June 1939 by Pius XII.^[75][76]

Canonized by Paul VI (26 October 1975)

Justin de Jacobis was canonized on 26 October 1975, in Saint Peter's Square, by Pope Paul VI, in the context of World Mission Sunday.^[77][78] In his homily, Paul VI presented Justin de Jacobis as an accomplished model of the 19th-century missionary vocation, quoting the Gospel: "Behold, a good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:21).^[79] The Pope stressed two axes of his work which, he underlined, anticipate by a century the post-conciliar pastoral approach:

"Behold, a good and faithful servant." (Mt 25:21) — Paul VI, homily for the canonization of Giustino de Jacobis, 26 October 1975^[80]

1. The formation of an indigenous clergy, through the College of the Immaculate, anticipating the vocational pastoral approach willed by the Second Vatican Council;
2. Ecumenical action, in his patient effort to draw closer to the Coptic-Ethiopian "separated brethren" and to dialogue with Muslims, despite grave hostilities.^[81]

Mortification and voluntary poverty

The biographers unanimously stress the ascetic rigour of Justin de Jacobis: food reduced to the strict minimum, very short sleep, prolonged nights of prayer, and even bodily mortification practices inherited from the 19th-century Italian spiritual tradition.^[94] He willingly gave away the new clothes offered to him, walked barefoot when circumstances required, and did not hesitate to perform manual tasks considered beneath his condition as bishop — sweeping, chores, nursing the sick — out of concern to share in everything the condition of his people.^[95]

A prayer rooted in the silence of Ethiopian churches

Justin de Jacobis prayed at length, often alone, in the Abyssinian churches themselves — not out of convenience, but by a deliberate choice to inhabit, body and soul, the spiritual tradition of the country he was evangelizing.^[96] This silent prayer, nourished by the Ge'ez liturgy he had made his own, is the inner source of his entire missionary method: one can make a people love Christ only by first loving what is best in that people.

An inculturation without doctrinal compromise

The most original trait of Justin de Jacobis's missionary spirituality lies in the balance he maintained, without ever breaking it, between two demands that many missionaries of his time set in opposition: to embrace in everything that is true and good in a non-Western culture, and to yield nothing on what touches the deposit of faith. He adopted the Abyssinians' habit, language, rite, food, and funerary and liturgical customs; he yielded nothing on Roman primacy or Chalcedonian Christology. This is precisely what the Second Vatican Council would recognize, a century later, as the just relationship between legitimate inculturation and the integrity of the deposit of faith — without Justin de Jacobis having needed a conciliar text to live it first, at the cost of his life.

An Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic Church still alive

The work of Justin de Jacobis did not disappear with the 19th-century persecutions. The communities he founded, transmitted and defended became, over the course of the 20th century, the backbone of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic Churches of the Ge'ez rite — two Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris, in full communion with Rome, which still celebrate the liturgy today in the language and according to the forms Justin de Jacobis had insisted, against all pressure, on preserving.^[97] This broader institutional dossier is developed in The Eastern Catholic Churches.

A forerunner hailed by Vatican II avant la lettre

By insisting, as early as the 1840s, on the formation of an indigenous clergy and on full respect for the Eastern rites, Justin de Jacobis anticipated by a century orientations the Second Vatican Council would formulate explicitly in the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum on the Eastern Catholic Churches and in the decree Ad Gentes on missionary activity. Paul VI was not mistaken when, in the midst of the conciliar reception, he canonized in 1975 this missionary of the previous century as a model for the entire post-conciliar Church.^[98] The historian Luigi Mezzadri brings an important precision here: Justin de Jacobis cannot be made, anachronistically, an actor of the ecumenical movement — born after his death — but indeed a "forerunner of an encounter and of respect between Catholics and Copts".^[99]

In the image of a Saint Daniel Comboni for Central Africa or a Saint Théophane Vénard for the Far East, Justin de Jacobis embodies the 19th-century Catholic missionary genius: a charity which never seeks to erase a people in order to impose upon it a foreign form of the faith, but which strives to make grow, from within an ancient tradition, full communion with the successor of Peter.

• Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) — founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists) to which Justin de Jacobis belonged.
• Catholic Missions in Africa — the great dossier of the evangelization of the continent, within which the Abyssinian mission belongs.
• The Eastern Catholic Churches — including the Ethiopian Catholic Church and the Eritrean Catholic Church of the Ge'ez rite, direct heirs of the work of Justin de Jacobis.
• Saint Daniel Comboni (1831-1881) — another great 19th-century missionary in Africa, a younger contemporary of Justin de Jacobis, who would pursue a similar intuition of forming indigenous clergy.
• Saint Théophane Vénard (1829-1861) — missionary and contemporary martyr, who died in the Far East one year after Justin de Jacobis.