BIFFI, EUGENIO

BIFFI, EUGENIO. - Of the Institute of Foreign Missions of Milan, Bishop of Cartagena (Colombia). Born in Milan on 22 Dec. 1829, in 1848 a seminarian, he took an active part in the Five Days of Milan. In 1853 he entered the Institute of Foreign Missions and was sent (1856), following a request by Pius IX, to the diocese of Cartagena in America, which was in a grave state of material and especially moral decline. Catechism and work schools, missions to the people, visits to prisoners, and assistance to the sick brought about a revival of Christian life there. Following the political disturbances that broke out in the republic, B. was exiled in 1862 for having defended the bishop's rights. He took refuge in Jamaica and then in Yucatán, where he evangelized the Maya Indians; in 1866 he acted as a peace mediator between them and the English governor. In the same year he was recalled to Milan, from where he departed on 9 Dec. 1867 as Apostolic Prefect of the new mission of Eastern Burma. He visited the vast mission several times, founded schools and charitable works, built churches and residences, introduced the art of photography, galvanoplasty, the cultivation of coffee, mulberry, and cinchona, and established the first lithography and printing press. In 1882, by unanimous request of the people, the clergy, and the Colombian authorities, he was elected Bishop of Cartagena. The diocese, where Freemasonry and immorality prevailed and was devoid of clergy, was a “corpse to be resurrected,” as the Archbishop of Bogotá expressed II. B. set to work as he had in 1856. Despite continuous political turmoil, he reopened the seminary and many abandoned churches, founded colleges and charitable works, multiplied pastoral visits, defended the Church’s freedom, and invited religious orders and nuns into the diocese, reviving ecclesiastical discipline. For his apostolate in Burma and Colombia he was called the “apostle of two continents.” He died in Barranquilla on 8 Nov. 1896.