VENERABLE VINCENT CIMATTI (1879-1965)

An athlete of the Spirit

The vocation of a fascinating individual

To know Fr Cimatti well is to be enamoured of him;. and his family, poor and tested, but rich in faith where a holy mother called Rosa brought up three children: Raffaella who would enter the Congregation of the Hospital Sisters of Mercy, a tower of strength and goodness among the sick in hospitals, on the outskirts of Rome and already Blessed; Luigi, a Salesian Brother and missionary in Latin America, who died in the odour of sanctity; and our Vincent, today Venerable.

The whole life of Vincent Cimatti is like a race in the service of Christ, in the ranks of Don Bosco, since it was the saint of youth who sent him on his way in the race of life. In fact at three years of age he was taken by his mother to the Servite church in Faenza where Don Bosco was preaching: "Vinnie, look, look at Don Bosco!" his mother cried holding him up in the middle of the crowd which had flocked to hear the saint. All his life Vincent would remember the kind face of the elderly priest.

The first leg of the race was when, at 17 years of age, having become a Salesian with perpetual profession, he was sent to Turin-Valsalice, where he taught and collected qualifications: a diploma in composition at the Parma Conservatoire, a degree in agriculture, in philosophy and pedagogy at the Royal University of Turin. He was always distinguished by his intelligence, his kindness and his fine voice. His operettas were widely performed in schools and Salesian oratories. He was called Maestro by generations of clerics. How much work he did, including manual work, in the oratories of Turin for youngsters; how much running around to help poor families. In the meantime he asked the Rector Major with great insistence: "Please find me a place in the poorest, most laborious and most abandoned mission. I don’t see myself in a comfortable setting."

Finally at 46 years of age he changed up a gear in his race: he was sent to Japan to found Salesian work in the Land of the Rising Sun. He worked there for 40 years, conquering the hearts of the Japanese with his kindness, and like Don Bosco becoming involved in the apostolate of the press and of music. He travelled a great deal, constantly encouraging the first Salesians and opening new works especially for orphans and the marginalised. He could have returned to Italy to pass his old age peacefully. But he wanted to die in Japan, "to become Japanese soil." And he was to die serenely as a patriarch, with that long white beard, among “his” Japanese. The smiling athlete of Christ had finished the race.

It is up to us to get to know his life and follow his example, as far as we can. Because he was a great champion and through his huge number of letters we can get a glimpse of his spirit in its human, Christian and Salesian components, in which we see what he really was, not only a saint but a genuine man. Intelligent, strong-willed, sensitive, from whom music flowed spontaneously, a lover of nature who loved all his neighbours, in control of himself while immersed in innumerable difficulties and sufferings. Only through his writings, which for the most part are still today unpublished, can we succeed in understanding that behind his smile and his pleasant ways an endless struggle with himself was going on, with an enormous capacity for suffering, as he faced all the difficulties, the discomforts, the poverty and putting up with those people who did not understand or know how to help him, especially in times of need. He was the most natural man in the world, in what he did, what he said, how he prayed, with that attitude without any pretentions which charmed everyone, young and old alike, with an unforgettable smile. A great and many-faceted personality, full of human and moral gifts, and outstanding for the virtues, especially charity - which helps us understand how Fr Cimatti is a genuine bearer of the Salesian charism in Japan, the one who most perfectly incarnated Don Bosco in that land.