GALLIZIA, Pio Alessandro. - Paravite missionary, bishop of Selasma and second Apostolic Vicar of the Ava and Pegu Mission in Burma, b. at Varallo in 1701, d. at Pegu in March 1745.
He was teaching dogmatic theology in Rome when in 1726 he set out for Pegu, arriving at Syriam on 27 Jan. 1728, but was unable to proceed to Ava where two months later Fr. Calchi, the first Apostolic Vicar, died. He took over the mission alone, and in 1737 returned to Italy to seek help. Having obtained from Benedict XIV in 1740 that the entire mission be entrusted once more to the Barnabites (after Fr. Calchi’s death the kingdom of Ava had been entrusted to secular priests, while the Barnabites retained Martaban and Pegu), and having been consecrated bishop by the same Pope, in February 1741 he sailed back with four companions: Fr. Nerini, his brother Angelo Capello, Fr. Alessandro Mondelli, lecturer in theology at Milan, and Giovanni del Conte, not yet a priest. They reached Syriam between 1742 and 1743. With the expanded freedom granted by the Pegu king Siriang-To, the bishop and the last two companions settled in the ancient royal city of Pegu, where they built a church in a house and began to preach and function publicly. During the war between the Burmans of Ava and the Peguans who had declared independence, a party of European adventurer-soldiers who had suddenly appeared in the port of Syriam fell into an ambush set by the suspicious Pegu king. While Fr. Nerini and his brother Capello escaped by flight, Bp. Gallizia with Frs. del Conte and Mondelli, who had accompanied the Europeans, were murdered by the Peguan in the woods between Pegu and Syriam in March 1745.
His Compendium of Christian Doctrine and Reasons for Embracing It, together with a Book of Daily Prayers, a Catechism and a Burmese Dictionary by two of his confreres, have been lost.
Another Fr. Pio Alessandro GALLIZIA (1735-63), also a Barnabite from Varallo and nephew of the above, was a most zealous missionary in the same Ava mission from 1760 together with Fr. Sebastiano Donati; but he died soon afterwards in 1763 at Monla, shortly after his companion.