Francesco Giovanni Bonifacio was born on 7 September 1912 at Pirano in Istria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and belonging to the Diocese of Trieste. He was the second of seven children of Giovanni Bonifacio, a stoker on the steamers that sailed out of Trieste, and Luigia Busdon, who took work as a cleaning woman to stretch the family's meagre income. The father's trade kept him long absent, and poverty was a constant companion; yet the home was profoundly Catholic, and it was there, and at the parish of San Francesco where he served as an altar boy, that little "Checco" learned the faith he would one day die for.
In 1924 he entered the seminary at Capodistria (Koper). His companions, watching his obedience, his gentleness, his readiness to serve anyone who asked, gave him the nickname that clung to him for life: El Santin, "the little saint." On Christmas Eve of 1931 his father died, and the seminarian became a support to his widowed mother. In 1932 he passed to the Central Theological Seminary of Gorizia to complete his studies. These were turbulent years in Italy: Fascism had consolidated its power and was pressing hard against the Church, and in 1934 the press launched a campaign against the local Church over a speech of Bishop Luigi Fogar. Bonifacio took no interest in politics; his heart was set on the altar.
On 26 October 1936 he was ordained deacon at Trieste by Archbishop Carlo Margotti of Gorizia, and on 27 December 1936 he was ordained priest in the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste. On 3 January 1937 he celebrated his first solemn Mass in his native Pirano. A few months later he was sent as vicar to Cittanova d'Istria, where he founded the local branch of Catholic Action and began the youth apostolate that would mark his whole priesthood. His mother and brothers followed him, and from then on shared each of his assignments.
On 13 July 1939 Bishop Antonio Santin of Trieste appointed him curate of Villa Gardossi, also called Crassizza (today Krasica), a scattering of poor hamlets — Baredine, Punta, Lozzari, Buzzai, Gardossi, Monte Cini, Costellaz, Braichi, Radani and others — set between Buie and Grisignana, some thirteen hundred souls, nearly all peasants. The rectory had neither running water nor electricity; the table was soup, polenta and eggs. Don Francesco organized Catholic Action and a parish choir, founded a drama society and a small lending library, taught religion in the school, promoted games and sport for the young, and looked after the aged, the sick and the destitute. What little food he had he divided with the poorest of his people. His own health was frail — asthma, a persistent cough, chronic trouble of the lungs and bronchi — yet his afternoons belonged to his parishioners: in every weather, on foot or by bicycle, he crossed the valley from end to end carrying comfort and encouragement. The people loved him.
War came in June 1940, but Istria felt little of it until the Italian collapse of 8 September 1943. The woods and lonely farmhouses around Villa Gardossi became a refuge for partisans, and German troops moved in to hold the key positions. Don Francesco met the terror with astonishing courage. During a German cordon-and-search operation he risked his life to recover and bury the bodies of fallen partisans. He stopped German soldiers from burning a house they suspected of sheltering the resistance. He prevented an angry demonstration at the Fascist headquarters in Buie after a peasant was murdered, and he snatched from a partisan firing squad a man accused of informing for the Germans. Young men who wished neither to be conscripted into the Fascist army nor forced into the partisan bands found shelter at his rectory. He belonged to no party; he belonged to Christ, and therefore to everyone.
In May 1945 the partisan army drove out the German and Italian forces, and Istria passed almost entirely to Tito's communist Yugoslavia. The new regime regarded the Church as an enemy: religious feasts were replaced by new civil holidays, the faithful were discouraged from going to Mass, and agents stood outside the church doors writing down the names of those who entered. Don Francesco, loved and followed by his people, was marked at once as a danger. Loyal parishioners warned him that some among his own congregation had gone over to the new masters. He went to Trieste to consult Bishop Santin, who counselled prudence, urged him to keep his activity within the church and to avoid any public stance, and told him to remain faithful to his duties without letting himself be intimidated by anyone. When he was denounced as a "subversive and anti-communist," he answered the slander by holding the meetings of Catholic Action inside the church with the doors flung wide open, so that anyone at all could come and hear what was said.
By September 1946 the danger was plain. He confided to a brother priest, Don Guido Bertuzzo, chaplain of Sicciole, that even to speak with someone in the street had become perilous, so closely was he watched. Word came on 10 September that the authorities of the Buie district held a list of young priests to be "liquidated" by the Popular Guard, and that his name stood first upon it. He did not flee; he went on with his priestly duties. On the evening of 11 September 1946, returning home on foot from Grisignana (Grožnjan) — he had been seen alive for the last time about four in the afternoon by Don Giuseppe Rocco, chaplain of Peroi, his confessor — he was stopped by "Popular Guards." After a bitter exchange he was taken away by force. According to the testimonies later gathered, he was stripped, struck in the face with a stone, beaten, finished with two stabs of a knife, and his body thrown into a foiba, one of the karst chasms of that country. He was thirty-four years old. His remains have never been found. When his brother went to the local communist militia to ask what had become of him, he was arrested on the charge of spreading false and anti-communist propaganda; shortly afterwards the family left for Italy.
His was not an isolated crime. In June 1946 Bishop Santin himself was stopped and beaten by communist activists on his way to confer Confirmation at Capodistria; his delegate Monsignor Giacomo Ukmar was beaten on 23 August 1947, the same day that the priest Don Miroslav Bulešić had his throat cut; in 1951 another delegate, Monsignor Giorgio Bruni, was assaulted while confirming in the bishop's name.
For years almost nothing was known of that September night, until witnesses at last spoke. Bishop Santin introduced the cause of beatification as early as 1957; after a long interruption it was resumed on 26 May 1997, and Bishop Eugenio Ravignani of Trieste, who in 1983 had drawn up a report on the murder, carried it forward. On 3 July 2008 Pope Benedict XVI promulgated the decree recognizing that Don Francesco Bonifacio had been killed in odium fidei — in hatred of the faith. The beatification was celebrated on 4 October 2008 in the Cathedral of San Giusto at Trieste, Archbishop Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presiding in the Pope's name, with Bishop Ravignani and many priests of the region concelebrating. His liturgical memorial is kept on 11 September. Since 2005 a square in the centre of Trieste bears his name, and a park in the Metropolitan City of Naples as well.
He left no book, no monument, no tomb — only a poor parish loved to the end and a life given away in small daily portions until it was taken all at once. He is a model for priests who serve where the Church is watched and hated, and for every Christian tempted to buy safety with silence.
Let us ask Blessed Francesco Bonifacio to obtain for us today the quiet courage to do our duty faithfully, without being intimidated by anyone.
