MAZZA, NICOLA. - Founder of pious institutes in Verona, born there on 10 March 1790 and died on 2 August 1865. From the earliest years of his priesthood (1814) he showed his particular vocation as a "father of the poor." The two girls he took in to poor rooms in 1828 were the seed of the Institute in which he provided a family education for numerous abandoned girls, an education that made them live as in their own home, divided by natural inclination into "families," each with a "mother."
In 1832 he began an Institute for poor boys endowed with fine intelligence and sound judgment, giving them the possibility of completing their studies free of charge, including university and advanced studies, until they reached the profession suited to their aptitudes.
He kindled and cultivated in several pupils who became priests and his co-workers the missionary vocation, and with them he attempted the founding of a mission in central Africa, under the direction of Giovanni Beltrame. To assist them he had purposely brought from Africa and educated in sections attached to his Institutes in Verona groups of black boys and girls. After a first heroic attempt was thwarted, he was about to begin a second with greater hopes of success when death overtook him. His Institutes for abandoned girls and for poor students (with a university college in Padua) continue to flourish in Verona, directed by the group of priests that M. himself had placed in charge of them, and which recently organized itself as a secular institute. The missionary work of M. was then revived and made to prosper by his disciple Daniele Comboni in the Institute of African Missions of Verona. The ordinary processes for his beatification have been carried out.
Bibliography2 works
Agostino Capovilla