BELTRAME, GIOVANNI. – Missionary, explorer, educator, born on 11 November 1824 at Valeggio sul Mincio and died on 8 April 1906 at Verona. A student at the Mazza Institute of Verona, he was accepted into what was then called the «Mission of Central Africa» (v. KHARTUM) by its apostolic pro-vicar, Dr. Knobelcher, who assigned the Mazza disciples a region on the Blue Nile, and later the peninsula of Sennar along the Jal and Sobat rivers. B., who had been ordained a priest in 1849, departed with his companion Don Antonio Castagnaro in October 1853, reaching Khartum on 29 December, where he began his missionary training with a boarding school for black boys. A year later, ascending the Blue Nile beyond the Egyptian frontier, he ventured into the land of the Sciangalla to study the possibilities of establishing a mission there, in agreement with his pro-vicar. Having crossed the province of Sennar, he reached Beni Sciangul on 7 February 1854, studying the entire country; the fruit of this exploration was his book Il Sennar e lo Sciangelle, subsequently published at Verona in 1879. In 1856 he returned to Italy, and at the beginning of 1857 he was in Vienna, at the invitation of Archbishop Mescutar, president of the Viennese Committee for Central Africa, who entrusted him with a new exploration. In September 1857 B. set out again, at the head of a new group of Mazza missionaries, Comboni (v.), and, ascending the White Nile, reached the station of S. Croce (14 February 1858). B.’s principal task was to study the Denka language, and he succeeded amid considerable difficulties and continual fevers. But the entire area proved sterile: hence, also in view of the deaths of several young confrères and of the pro-vicar himself, as well as the orders of the new pro-vicar Kirchner, the decision to return and to await at Scellal near Assuan (Nubia) definitive orders from Rome, which in fact arrived with the transfer of the mission to the Franciscans of Styria.
Having returned to his homeland in 1862, B. remained at his institute in Verona, which he subsequently directed from 1899 until his death. He displayed vigorous pastoral, educational, and cultural activity, consistently taking part in all of Italy’s geographical and colonial events. Other works of a missionary-colonial nature by him are Fiume Bianco e i Denka (1881), In Nubia presso File, Siena ed Elefantina (1893).
Giovanni B. Tragella