Prot. N. 0801/2021
Rome, October 24, 2021

Friar Fernando Maggiori: Affection Made Mission
“If you want to be great, become the least and the servant of all”
cf. Mk 10:43b-44

Letter of the Minister General, Friar Carlos A. Trovarelli
on the occasion of World Mission Day 2021

Dear brothers,

In his Message for World Mission Day 2021, Pope Francis wrote:

On World Mission Day, which we celebrate each year on the penultimate Sunday of October, we recall with gratitude all those men and women who by their testimony of life help us to renew our baptismal commitment to be generous and joyful apostles of the Gospel. Let us remember especially all those who resolutely set out, leaving home and family behind, to bring the Gospel to all those places and people athirst for its saving message.

In this letter, I would like to follow through on Pope Francis’ invitation and introduce you to one of our confreres who was able to “set out, leaving home and family behind” and bring the Gospel to the other side of the world. I want to tell you about Friar Fernando, a missionary in Cuba.

The personal statistics on him are not wrong. When he was nearly seventy years old, Friar Fernando Maggiore left what was then the Italian Province of the Marches and set out with two other confreres to begin a new presence of the Order in Cuba. After serving as a missionary there for twenty years, and having reached the marvelous threshold of ninety years old, Friar Fernando returned to his home Province. The example set by this humble, cheerful, poor and simple friar motivates me to pay homage to him and to make his human, spiritual and Franciscan legacy known to our Conventual family. The Lord reminds us through the person of Friar Fernando, through his consecration and his mission, that evangelical life is not just an idea, but a possible reality as well.

Friar Fernando held various offices in his home Province, but he was particularly well known for his service as Novice Master in Osimo, Italy, from September of 1980 to August of 2001. On November 6, 2001, he left Rome with Friars Silvano Castelli and Roberto Carboni, and stayed in Spain for a month to learn Spanish. On December 4, 2001, he arrived in Cuba and lived in the community in Matanzas, our first friary in Cuba, until mid-2015. After that, he lived in our community in Havana until September 2, 2021, when he returned to Italy.

In the Havana community, he served as a formator (2016-2017). He also served as a confessor to the Siervas de María Sisters. He was a spiritual advisor, an associate pastor in the parishes of Matanzas and Havana, and a Vice Rector at the Rectory Church of San Francisco in Havana. One should mention that Friar Fernando was always well known and appreciated among the people for hearing confessions. He also performed various services at the friary, such as shopping, usually on foot, patiently waiting in line along with everybody else. He performed other pastoral services, such as visiting the sick, counseling, offering hospitality and advising those who needed advice. He was a very balanced person, deeply prayerful, and had a gift for discernment.

In a letter Friar Fernando wrote to the Cuban people, he recalled a beautiful anecdote: on the day of his ordination, his mother was looking around at all the people present at the celebration and said to her newly ordained son: “Treat these creatures with affection.” I can assure you, having been to the island several times, that this maternal advice became a true style of mission for Friar Fernando. His style of mission was one of generous service, being a witness of God’s goodness, serenely accepting the local setting and customs, having respect for the culture and the people, for each person and every creature.

These attitudes did not suddenly spring into being; they were the result of Friar Fernando’s radical choice for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. My homage wants to transition into a prayer of thanksgiving and a proclamation to the Order about the “mission possible.” It is possible, at any time, for us to offer ourselves with total dedication, to offer our time, our love, and our strength, in proclaiming the Gospel ad gentes, or in any way, and thus, become “great” in the eyes of God.

Friar Carlos A. Trovarelli
Minister General