MAZZA, NICOLA. — Founder of several institutes in Verona, born there on 10 March 1790 and died there 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 young girls he took in to his modest rooms in 1828 were the seed of the Institute in which he provided a family-like education for numerous abandoned children, who lived as if in their own home, brilliantly organized into “families,” each with a “mother.”
In 1832, he established an Institute for poor boys of fine intelligence and sound judgment, enabling them to pursue their studies free of charge, including university and advanced studies, until they could enter professions suited to their abilities.
He inspired and nurtured missionary vocations in several of his pupils who became priests and his collaborators, and with them he attempted to found a mission in Central Africa under the direction of Giovanni Beltrame. To assist them, he had specifically brought from Africa and educated in sections attached to his Institutes in Verona groups of Black boys and girls. After a first heroic attempt failed, he was about to begin a second with greater prospects of success when death overtook him. His Institutes for abandoned girls and poor students (with a university college in Padua) continue to flourish in Verona, directed by the group of priests whom Maazza himself had placed in charge, and who have recently organized themselves as a secular institute. The missionary work of Maazza was later revived and prospered by his disciple Daniele Comboni in the Institute of the African Missions in Verona. Ordinary processes for his beatification have been initiated.