On
the seventh anniversary of the beatification
of Fra’ Gabriele Allegra, which took place on the 29th September
2012 in Acireale, on Sunday 29th September the house where Gabriele
Allegra was born on the 26th December 1907, will be inaugurated at
number 16 of Via Soldato Salvatore Torrisi, in San Giovanni la Punta. The old
house, thanks mainly to the donations of the Chinese brothers from Hong Kong,
has been restored and will become a place of worship.
"The
design choices of restoration - writes the engineer Fabio Domenico Lombardo -
they started from the memory of the place. The birthplace of Blessed Gabriel is
a space in which the intimacy and warmth of human and family events that have
inhabited and lived are clearly perceptible. The idea of restoration begins
precisely from these traces and from the premise of preserving and restoring
the original consistency of the space, restoring it free from the signs of
neglect and ready for a new growth perspective.
"To
shore up the costs of restoration – ‘the association Gabriele fra le genti Onuls’,
which includes the relatives of the blessed, - a fundraising has also been
launched entitled ‘a tile for the blessed’“.
The
program of the 29th September is entitled "Festa della
Gioia" and includes: at 9.30 am arrival and welcome in the town hall of
San Giovanni la Punta; 10 am opening of the "festival of joy" with
animation and moments of shared listening by the Franciscan friars; 11.30 Holy
Mass in the churchyard of the Mother Church of St. John the Baptist; 13 hours
packed lunch; 15.30 gathering of the participants in the Maddonna della
Ravanusa sanctuary and moments of prayer; 16.30 procession with the relic of
the blessed, from the Ravanusa to the birthplace of the blessed; 16.45 arrival
at the birthplace and inauguration and blessing of the premises where Gabriele
Allegra was born; 17.30 moments of prayer.
Briefly,
we publish the figure of Fra’ Gabriele Allegra again. Although he was born on
December
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| The house before the rebuilding |
26th, 1907, he was registered on January 2nd,
1908. His parents were poor, but profoundly religious. The father was a farmer,
the mother was a housewife. Gabriele, at the end of the elementary school,
entered the seraphic college of San Biagio di Acireale. Then he carried out the
novitiate in the San Vito convent in Bronte, where he intensified devotion,
meditation and love for St. Francis. He took his simple vows in October 1924,
the year in which he returned to Acireale to complete his humanistic and
philosophical studies. In Rome, in the International College of Sant’Antonio,
he continues his formation in the Franciscan lifestyle. In 1930 he was ordained
a priest and in 1931 Father Gabriele embarked for China, to the Hengyang Minor
Seminary, in which he consolidated his dream of translating the Bible into
Chinese.
 |
| Una mattonella per il beato |
Spiritual
father of small seminarians, he was then appointed rector of the seminary.
Living in the lifestyle of the Chinese people allows him to deepen the culture
and history of those people and to understand the Chinese language more
quickly. In April 1935 he completed the translation of the Holy Scriptures in
Chinese and later founded a Franciscan Bible Study in Beijing, inaugurated in
1945. In 1948 he transferred the Bible Study to Hong Kong, and in 1955 he was
awarded with the Honoris Causa degree in Sacred Theology, as a recognition of
its biblical culture and immense translation work. There have been many
journeys that Father Allegra made in particular between China, Italy and Sicily.
When asked if he felt more Italian or Chinese he, smiling, in his dialect
answered: "sugnu sicilianu, italianu e cinisi” (I am Sicilian, Italian and
Chinese).
In
the last months of his life, although his health was put to the test, he loved
to return to the lepers and polio children. Father Gabriele died in Hong Kong
on the 26th January 1976 and in 1986 his body was transferred to a
chapel in the church of San Biagio di Acireale.
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