FAGNANO, GIUSEPPE. - Born on 9 March 1844 at Rocchetta Tanaro (Alessandria), died at Santiago on 18 Aug. 1916. In 1860 he entered the Oratory of St. John Bosco in Turin and, ordained a priest in 1868, was sent to the colleges of Lanzo Torinese and Varazze. In 1875 he was part of the first expedition of missionaries that the Saint sent to the Argentine Republic under the leadership of the future Cardinal Giovanni Cagliero (v.), apostle of Patagonia.
He first founded the house of S. Nicolas de los Arrogos, in the province of Buenos Aires; then, in 1880, that of Carmen de Patagones, on the Rio Negro, at the northern border of Patagonia, where, lost in immense prairies, lived the surviving Araucanian Indians, driven back into those lands by the recent expedition of the national army, and various families of Tehuelche Indians. Don F. erected there the first parish church, opened colleges, founded a meteorological observatory and devoted himself to the evangelization of the aborigines. In 1883 the apostolic vicariate of southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego was erected; Cagliero was placed over the first and F. over the second, and he moved to Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, to carry on there a missionary and civilizing work that lasted more than thirty years, aided also by his confreres and by the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Through a complex and tenacious effort, he succeeded in integrating into civilized life desert areas of Argentina and Chile, giving an impulse to studies and establishing schools and museums. F. is buried in the mother church of Punta Arenas, which he built.
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Luigi Castano