MASSAJA, Guglielmo. – Cardinal, Capuchin. Born at Piovà (Asti) on 8 June 1809, died at S. Giorgio a Cremano (Naples) on 6 August 1889 in a reputation for holiness. He entered the novitiate of the Madonna di Campagna in Turin on 6 September 1826. He was lecturer in philosophy and theology (1836–46), confessor to Princes Emanuele and Ferdinando of Savoy, and definitor. Elected on 12 May 1846 as Apostolic Vicar of the Galla (southern Ethiopia), he left Rome for his mission on 3 June 1846. He was the first modern Catholic bishop to set foot again in Ethiopia, defying the death penalty, and there he reconstituted the hierarchy by consecrating three bishops.
Exiled by the prince Ubiè, persecuted and excommunicated by the heretical bishop Salama, he became widely known under the name of Abuna Messias. During the five years 1846–50 he traversed the coasts of eastern Africa seeking a route to the Galla, but in vain; he helped to save the Lazarist mission; ordained several dozen priests and consecrated as bishop the future Bl. G. De Jacobis (7 January 1849). Once more driven back to the sea, he returned to Europe in 1850 to bring to the attention of the Holy See and France the sad religious and political conditions of eastern Africa. His second journey (4 April 1851), by way of Egypt and the Sudan, finally brought him to his mission on 21 November 1852, after six years of heroic trials and romantic vicissitudes.
During the Galla decade (1852–63) he founded missionary centres in Gudrù, Ghera, etc., and in Kaffa (1859–61); he fostered the training of indigenous clergy by creating “the travelling seminary”; he laid down for missionaries admirable principles of apostolate in the Magma Charta of Assandabo (16 March 1854); he pioneered the use of medicine as an apostolic tool, and pacified princes and peoples whom he won over by the holiness of his life. During his two sojourns in Europe (1864–66, 1867) he wrote a catechism, founded the Galla College in Marseilles (1866), and published the *Lectiones grammaticales pro missionariis qui addiscere volunt linguam amaricam seu vulgarem Abyssiniae nec non et linguam oromonicam* (Paris 1877). His third journey (19 April 1866) took him as far as Aden, followed by a fourth and final one (9 September 1867) which opened the Shoan period (1868–79).
Friend and counsellor to Menelik, king of the country, his religious and social activity was such that he was proposed for the office of Abuna of Ethiopia, but he declined. Exiled in 1879 by order of King John, he returned to Italy, where the veneration of the masses for the servant of God reached the point of cutting pieces from his garments to obtain relics, and likewise at his deathbed. Leo XIII, his papal patron, created him Bishop of Stauropoli (1881) and Cardinal (1884), despite strong opposition; he often held secret conversations with the new cardinal on the most confidential affairs of the Church. At the news of his death the Holy Father exclaimed: “A saint has died!” The Church has opened his beatification process.
At the “command” of Leo XIII, Massaja—now more than seventy years old—set himself to write his classic work *I miei trentacinque anni di missione nell’alta Etiopia* (Rome–Milan 1885–95 in twelve large volumes). Written entirely in his own hand (not by his secretary, as had been believed hitherto), sometimes “for at least fifteen hours a day,” these volumes are an undisputed mine of missionary and scientific value, not only for apostles and educators but also for Africans, explorers and scholars. They stand among the foremost works of nineteenth-century missionary literature and remain unrivalled in their field. Even so, the published work is now subject to broad criticism. A critical study of the original manuscript—5 volumes, 3,908 pages—preserved in the Vatican Secret Archive has revealed significant divergences from the printed edition. The fourfold original design envisaged and executed by Cardinal Massaja—historical, apologetic, polemical and missionary—was, at the time of publication, transformed into a narrative and popularising work. To this end, collaborators made omissions, additions and interpolations that ended by altering the character of the original and hence of the author. The discrepancies between the two texts are especially evident in omissions and additions: the former, amounting to more than 400 pages, relegated to the background the extraordinary apostolic spirit of the “holy prelate” because they were largely of a missionary nature; the latter, particularly in the use of a terminology that included vulgar epithets such as “scoundrel,” “rascal,” “son of the devil,” “dog,” “vulture,” etc. (which do not appear in the Vatican original), presented the supposed author in a false light of presumptuous infallibility and harshness, drawing bitter criticism and unfavourable judgments. Finally, the absence in the printed work of that religious and providential substratum which gives life to the whole original is another serious deficiency that diminishes the gigantic stature of the protagonist. From a literary standpoint, the manuscript shows a Massaja who is less polished and refined than the published version, yet more personal and effective, better served by a spare and spontaneous style that is incisive and eloquent rather than the “novelistic” style of *I miei trentacinque anni*.
Among his minor works, noteworthy is the pamphlet *De la propagande musulmane en Afrique et dans les Indes* (Paris 1851), of such religious-political interest for eastern Africa in the mid-nineteenth century that it circulated among the diplomatic benches of London and Paris. His epistolary manuscripts are scattered in Italy, especially in the Archive of Propaganda Fide, and abroad, notably in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, Toulouse and Lyons. Almost all his African writings have been lost.