Daniele Comboni was an Italian Catholic bishop who served in the missions in Africa and was the founder of both the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Comboni Missionary Sisters..
15/3/1831: Daniel Comboni born in Limone sul Garda (Italia).
20/2/1843: Enters the Institute founded by Don Nicola Mazza to “bring together and educate poor youth”.
6/1/1849: Vows in the presence of Don Mazza to consecrate himself to the mission of Central Africa for the whole of his life.
31/12/1854: Ordained a priest.
10/9/1857: Daniel Comboni’s first journey to Central Africa.
15/1/1859: The missionaries of Don Mazza decide to abandon the mission of the Holy Cross.
Comboni, racked by fever, returns to Italy.
12/1/1861: Journey to Aden to ransom young African slaves whom he then takes to Verona to be educated.
15/9/1864: He conceives his Plan for the Regeneration of Africa while praying at the tomb of St. Peter in Rome.
18/9/1864: Beatification of Margaret Mary Alacoque.
He presents his Plan to the Prefect of Propaganda Fide. The following day he presents it to Pope Pious IX.
December 1864: Journeys for missionary animation to Turin, Lyons, Paris, Cologne and London to make his Plan known
13/4/1866: The Mazza Institute renounces its missionary commitment to Africa. Comboni decides to found his own missionary society.
1/6/1867: He founds in Verona the Missionary Institute for Africa as apart of the Organisation of the Good Shepherd, an international missionary association.
29/11/1867: He leaves from Marseilles to Cairo with three Camillians, three Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition and 16 young African women. In Cairo he founds two institutes – one for men and one for women according to the outline drawn up in the Plan.
7/7/1868: He begins a missionary animation tour through France, Germany, Austria and Italy.
23/5/1869: He opens a third house in Cairo which is to be a school with African teachers.
24/6/1870: He prepares a document to present to the Council Fathers: “Postulatum pro Nigris Africae Centralis”. He sends it together with a circular letter signed by numerous Bishops and approved by Pope Pius IX.
14/9/1871: He speaks on the theme of “Africa or death” at the congress of German Catholics in Magonza.
1/1/1872: Comboni founds the Institute of the Pie Madri della Nigrizia in Verona.
The same month he begins his missionary magazine, “The annals of the Good Shepherd”.
26/5/1872: He is nominated Pro-Vicar of Central Africa.
1/6/1872: Pope Pius IX entrusts the mission of Central Africa to Comboni.
26/1/1873: He leaves Cairo and reaches Khartoum and Kordofan. For the first time European Religious form part of the expedition.
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We will have to labour hard to sweat, to die. But the thought that one sweats and dies for love of Jesus Christ And the salvation of the most abandoned should in the world is far too sweet for us to desist from this great enterprise.
11/5/1873: Comboni’s programmatic homily in Khartoum.
15/10/1876: He goes to Verona to receive the vows at the professions of the first Pie Madri della Nigrizia.
12/8/1877: Episcopal Consecration of Mgr. Comboni as Vicar of Central Africa.
15/12/1877: He leaves for Africa with a new missionary expedition: five priests, six brothers and five Pie Madri della Nigrizia.
April 1878: He founds a Christian village in Malbes, where Christian families who were educated in the mission are settled.
30/7/1881: He leaves for Khartoum with the intention of presenting a plan to Rauf Pascià for the final defeat of slavery in the Nuban region.
5/10/1881: He is attacked by a violent fever and in a few days the life of the Apostle of Africa nears its end.
10/10/1881: He dies at 10 in the evening in Khartoum, surrounded by his missionaries.
In 1885 the tomb of Comboni would be desecrated by the Mahdists.
1927: The diocesan cause for his beatification and canonisation is begun in Verona.
6/1/1969: Canonical recognition for a third Institute inspired by the spirituality of Comboni: The Secular Comboni Missionaries.
17/3/1996: Solemn Beatification of Daniel Comboni in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome.
5/10/2003: Blessed Daniel Comboni is canonised by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome
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