BONACINA, FERDINANDO. - Missionary, who died for the faith. Born at Reggio Emilia on 7 Apr. 1804, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1826 as a coadjutor brother. Highly skilled in various trades, he rendered great services at Tivoli and Rome, even obtaining Gregory XVI’s acceptance of one of his plans for restoring the Acqua Paola aqueduct. In 1840 he landed in Syria, where he acquired an almost legendary reputation for his strength, kindness, and skill, to the point of being proposed by the natives as successor to the Maronite patriarch who died in 1853. He served the mission especially through the construction of houses and churches (the churches of Bikfaya and Zalhe, the seminary of Ghazir, the first college of Beirut, etc.). During the massacres of 1860, he was killed by the Druzes on 18 June, together with his superior Fr. Billotet, at Zalhe in Lebanon, and was buried in the church he had built. The process for his beatification, together with that of the other martyrs of Lebanon, has been initiated.
BONACINA, FERDINANDO
BIBL.: P. M. Martin, Notes historiques sur cinq Jéuites massacrés au Mont-Liban en 1860, in A. Carayon, Documents inédits concernant la Compagnie de Jésus, XVIII, Poitiers 1865; L. Rocci, I sei martiri del Libano d. Comp. d. Gesù uccisi nel 1860, Isola del Liri 1927, pp. 101-17. Edmondo Lamalle
Cite this article
“BONACINA, FERDINANDO.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II (1949), p. 1052. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/bonacina-ferdinando.