Antoninus of Reschio

ANTONINUS OF RESCHIO. - Missionary, b. 28 Oct. 1832 in S. Martino di Fisciano near Perugia, d. at Foligno on 19 July 1907. He took the Capuchin habit in 1847 and was ordained a priest in 1855. Because of his frail health he could not go to the missions among the infidels, and had to content himself with preaching among the populations of Umbria. He collaborated with Card. Pecci (later Leo XIII) in social apostolate. In May 1878 he set out for Brazil; in 1882 he returned to his homeland because of illness, but at the end of that same year he was assigned to Chile. There he had organized an agricultural school, when in 1884 he was recalled to Rome for the general secretariat of the missions. He visited the missions of the Near East and of North Africa. Having left that office in 1896, he devoted himself to the apostolate of the word and of the pen, leaving some twenty books on social, religious, missionary questions, etc.

Of interest for the missions are: Memoria sobre a Catechese dos Iudios, Maranhao 1882; Monita pro educatione juvenum Capuccinorum, praecipue illorum qui ad Missiones aspirent, Rome 1886; Missionum Ordinis FF. Min. Capuccinorum descriptio, Rome 1890; L'Arancania. Memorie inedite, Rome 1890.

There remained unpublished: La vita del genere umano raccontata da un Missionario ai selvaggi d'America. Prima parte (1883).