St. Guido Maria Conforti

Guido Maria Conforti was born in Casalora di Ravadese (diocese and province of Parma, Italy), in 1865, the eighth of ten children of Rinaldo Conforti and Antonia Adorni. He attended elementary school from 1872 and each day on his way to the school he would stop by the church of Santa Maria della Pace, his parish church, where he used to have conversations with the crucified Jesus Christ. This was when his vocation became apparent. He later recalled: "I looked at Him and He looked at me and seemed to say so many things". He enrolled in the seminary in Parma at the age of 17 in November 1876. He began reading the works of Saint Francis Xavier which inspired in him a desire to be a missionary, but his requests to join the Society of Jesus or the Salesians of Saint John Bosco were denied. At the time, the rector of the seminary was Andrea Carlo Ferrari, future cardinal and Blessed. Their relationship became a friendship. He was ordained to the priesthood on 22 September 1888 in Parma. After his ordination, Conforti served as a professor at the seminary where he studied and he later became the vice-rector of the seminary. He became the Vicar-General of Parma on 7 March 1896. Conforti established the Xaverian Missionaries on 3 December 1895 and it received the approval of Pope Leo XIII. At this time, in 1899, he sent the first missionaries to China. Leo XIII appointed him as the Archbishop of Ravenna on 9 June 1902 following the death of Cardinal Agostino Gaetano Riboldi, and he later submitted his resignation to a reluctant Pope Pius X due to his ill health in October 1904. The next month, on 14 November, he was made both the Coadjutor Bishop of Parma and the Titular Archbishop of Stauropolis. In 1907 he became the Bishop of Parma, retaining his title of Archbishop. He was known to travel to all parishes via horseback or other means to inspect his new archdiocese. Conforti is said to have provided the initiative behind Pope Benedict XV's encyclical, Maximum illud, of 30 November 1919. That document is called the Magna Carta of modern Catholic missionary work. He travelled to China in 1928 via Marseille to visit the Xaverian Missionaries working there. He arrived in Shanghai on 26 October 1928 and met with his contacts to inspect their work. Conforti returned to Parma soon after his visit to China and fell ill in October 1931. He died a month later and he was interred in Parma. His tomb was later relocated in 1942 and once more in 1996. His memorial falls on November 5.