With this sentence, “there was no self,” a film producer described a friend of my dad’s, and mine, Fr. Cesare Colombo, a PIME Missionary, a splendid man, called by God to give up everything, his very self, in service of  those whom the Lord entrusted to him.  This is his story.

Fr. Cesare was the third and last child of a humble family.  He had two older sisters, and I know that when he was born, in 1916, he was the darling of the entire family.  His parents made a living running a small “everything” store and tending their garden in a village in the Lake Como area of Italy. I know the area well, because I was born there.  I know the deep, deep Catholic roots of the simple, hard- working folks who live there and gave the Church so many heroic priests and nuns – priests and nuns whose vocations sprang from parents just as heroic, who nurtured them and taught them to love the Lord with words and deeds.

I met Fr. Cesare as a little girl, in the early 1950’s.  This is the story I remember hearing as he sat around our dinner table: “When I arrived in Kengtung, Burma, the bishop assigned me to a territory in the middle of the jungle.  At first, no one would talk to me. Here I was, all alone in the jungle, asking the Lord why on earth He had sent me to a place where no one wanted me. Finally, one man came to me: a leper.  Since I had been trained as a nurse, I was not afraid of that terrible disease and, as I cleansed his wounds, we became friends, or so I thought. A week later, he disappeared without a word.  Talk about discouragement!  The only human being who had accepted me had left  without even saying good-bye.”

Never fear! a few days later, the man was back … with his entire family, and Fr. Cesare’s work among the lepers began.  The word began to spread that there was a man who was not afraid of lepers, loved them, and knew how to help them.  Pretty soon, he had a thriving community in the middle of the jungle:  this was 1937.

The long tentacle of WWII reached into the Burmese jungle.  First the English, then the Japanese, rounded up all Italian missionaries and put them in concentration camps.  That’s when the hand of the Lord showed itself clearly in the middle of so much confusion.  In fact, Fr. Cesare was in the same concentration camp with the entire faculty of medicine of the university of the Dutch Indies.  The professors, to keep from going insane, held classes every day, and Fr. Cesare attended every time he could.  After the war, he went back to Kengtung with his new knowledge of medicine, and his lepers were waiting.  He knew he could cure them and arrest the devastation of leprosy, but he needed the right drugs.  This is when Fr. Cesare became the true father of an ever-expanding community of abandoned, rejected and persecuted people.  He formed a real village, governed by an elected council.  He knew that as long as simple precautions were taken, there was no need to isolate a leper from his family

He also knew that, if his people were ever to be happy, they needed to feel useful, productive and valued – so he taught them how to bake bricks, build huts (and a church, and a hospital!) and clear land to plant the ever-important rice.  He helped those who were cured start their own little villages around the main hospital, and become independent.  And as more lepers came, he became the “beggar in chief,”  writing to family and friends, asking for money for his precious children.  And the money came, with the needed drugs and other supplies. And nuns from his same region of Italy came to help.  And still more lepers came; walking sometimes for hundreds of miles on rotting legs. They came with their spouses and children, their eyes full of fear and hope.  And no one had the heart to turn them away, even if they had to stretch the food supplies even further.

This is when his superiors decided that, if Padre Cesare were to run a leprosarium, he’d better have an official MD degree: in the early 1950’s, they sent him to Rome to earn it. Thanks to the instruction of the professors in the concentration camp, he was able to do so in only two years.  During that time, my family lived in Rome, and Fr. Cesare was a frequent Sunday guest; we kids loved him and his stories of far-away Burma.  We did not realize at the time what a sacrificial life he lived, but his stories, which kept us children in giggles, gave us many glimpses.  Fr. Cesare was, first and foremost, a priest.  He celebrated Mass, baptized, married, buried, and heard Confessions. One day, he was so tired that fell asleep in the confessional.  To his surprise, when he woke up, he was “stuck” to the confessional grill.  What happened?  Well, a young “customer,” patiently waiting for Father to hear his Confession and getting no response, decided to pass the time by tying knots to the beard that so temptingly stuck out from the holes in the grill.  Then, tired of waiting, he left.  It took a while for the good priest to free his beard!

“There was no self;” as the father of 5,000 children, and the only doctor for hundreds of miles around Kengtung, Fr. Cesare slept an average of three hours per night. His village became known from as far away as China as “the Happy City,” and lepers continued to pour into his village.  Happy because one small man, from a far away country had heard, and answered, the call of the Lord.

In 1966, the Burmese government expelled all foreigners, including Fr. Cesare Colombo.  Governments that demand totalitarian rule are afraid of God and His servants: love and selfless sacrifice are terrible threats to dictators! When he boarded the plane, more than 1,000 of his villagers, including 400 children, had walked more than 20 miles, through the jungle, to say “goodbye.”  He returned to Italy, where he spent the rest of his life fund raising for his children in Burma. Do you want to see Fr. Cesare in action?  These two documentaries are a good introduction to his saving works of mercy:  “The Touch of His Hand” and “The Happy City.”

This weekend, the Church asks all of us to pray for vocations.  Fr. Cesare is but one of many who answered the Lord’s call.  He is still calling: are we too rich, too comfortable, to “give up self?”