SAPETO, GIUSEPPE

SAPETO, GIUSEPPE. - Missionary of St. Vincent de’ Paul, born at Carcare (Genoa) on 27 Apr. 1811, died at Genoa on 25 Aug. 1895.

Having entered the Congregation of the Mission on 29 Oct. 1829, he took his vows on 21 Feb. 1832. He was a missionary in Syria when he learned that the d’Abbadie brothers had arrived in Egypt with the purpose of undertaking a journey to Abyssinia. S. went to join them and, with them, penetrated into Abyssinia by way of Massaua, where he formed a small group of converts in the capital of Tigrai. This fact prompted

Pope Gregorio XVI to send other Vincentian missionaries to those regions, under the leadership of Bl. Giustino De Jacobis. After five years of apostolic labours, S., stricken with scurvy, went to Cairo. On 16 Sept. 1848 he obtained dispensation from his religious vows and returned to Italy.

Besides his numerous unpublished writings of a linguistic character, preserved in the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome, there remains by S.

the work Viaggio e missione cattolica fra i Mensa, i Bogos e gli Habab (Rome, 1857), which contains interesting information on the history of Christianity in Abyssinia and on the origin of the difficult mission entrusted in that country to the sons of St. Vincenzo de' Paoli.