Priest (January 30, 2014)
“Fr. Carlo Braga enchanted everybody with his large-hearted goodness and super-abounding gratitude”
Fr. Carlo Braga was born in the year after Don Bosco died and on the day before the annual solemn feast of Mary Help of Christians, on May 23, 1889. He lived his childhood and early adolescent in Tirano, of the Valtellina zone of the Lombard Region of Northern Italy. His mother, Maddalena Mazza, died alone in a hospital while her Carlino was merely age six.
Nonetheless, in these moments of unwanted losses, Fr. Braga found providential substitutes in the Salesians, in both the masculine and feminine. The Daughters of Mary Help of Christians took him in their kindergarten and elementary school in Tirano.
But it was during Fr. Braga’s stay with the Salesians in Sondrio that Providence extraordinarily gave him the opportunity to encounter St. John Bosco’s successor, the Blessed Michael Rua, who opened to him the way to one day emulate St. John Bosco by becoming a Salesian himself.
And so began Carlo’s journey of becoming a Salesian. In 1904, he was sent to the novitiate of the Provincia Centrale in Foglizzo, when the original plan was to send him to the novitiate of the Lombarda-Veneta Province which was his Salesian province of origin. Finally, he made his profession on July 30, 1906. On April 11, 1914, he was ordained, but not after some delay in his admission to the orders.
He hardly made it in time to receive the missionary cross in April 1919 from the Rector Major, Fr. Paolo Albera, in Valdocco, together with eight other Salesians and ex-soldiers like him. Again, after more delays, he left Italy on August 23rd and arrived in China on September 29, 1919.
Fr. Carlo Braga divided his missionary life into two periods that he considered the “summa capita” of his missionary life, spent beside the Salesian bishop and martyr Luigi Versiglia: the first, from 1919-1924, when he was assigned as superior of the orphanage “St. Joseph” of Ho Sai; the second, from 1925-1929, when he was rector of “Don Bosco College” of Shiu Chow. In 1930, he was made provincial, following the nomination of the Superior of the Mission, Fr. Ignacio Canazei, as bishop of Shiu Chow, in place of the deceased Bishop Luigi Versiglia.
During the 65 years of his religious profession as a Salesian and 57 years as a priest, Fr. Braga was rector for 14 years, provincial for 23 years and “Visitatore” for five years. He passed away in the early morning of January 3, 1971, the Solemnity of the Epiphany, in Don Bosco Juniorate of San Fernando, Pampanga.
The death of Fr. Braga was a first in the history of the Salesians in the Philippines.
