Sierro, Candido (Agostino Giuseppe)

SIERRO, Candido (Agostino Giuseppe). - Born on March 18, 1840 at Hérémence (Valais, Switzerland) and died in Brazil in 1874.

He entered the Capuchins in 1859, where he took the name Candido. Ordained a priest in March 1864, he arrived in Brazil in May 1870, where he was entrusted with the founding of a mission in the basin of the Rio Campim. On August 15, 1871 he founded the village of Aldea de Assumpçao, gathering some sixty families of Indians, whom he had clear the virgin forest, and in the meantime he prepared them for Baptism with daily catechetical instruction, with solemn ceremonies of worship and the recitation of the Rosary every evening. After six months the first 150 Indians were baptized. In 1872 S. handed the village over to a confrere and, after a journey of 30 km. upstream, reached the Turuyara Indians, among whom he obtained equal results. S. was then appointed vice-prefect of the Capuchin province of Pernambuco and thought of erecting missionary stations throughout the entire basin of the Rio Campim. At the beginning of 1874 he moved to the Amanayés Indians, who however had been incited against the missionary by a white trader. The first night after his arrival, at the end of January or the beginning of February, he was slaughtered by the Amanayés.

Nicola Kowalsky