Giuseppe Fagnano

Giuseppe Fagnano was born in Rocchetta Tanaro, in the province of Asti, on 9 March 1844, from a peasant family. He began his high school studies and ecclesiastical career in the episcopal seminary of Asti.

After the Second War of Independence against Austria, led by popular enthusiasms, the young Fagnano volunteered among the Garibaldians and took care of assistance to the wounded; however, Garibaldi was induced to pass between regular troops due to his insufficiency towards anti-cylericalism of other volunteers; in subsequent months of war he was assigned to assist the injured in Asti at the premises of the seminary. In November 1859 he entered the oratory of Don Giovanni Bosco in Turin, continuing his studies. In 1864 he was ordained a priest to Casale Monferrato. He was sent as a teacher from 1863 to 1872 in the college of Lanzo Torinese and subsequently as bursar in the college of Varazze.

In 1875 he was included by Don Bosco among the first missionaries sent to Argentina where, in the locality of San Nicolás de los Arroyos a Salesian college was opened. The beginning of the College of San Nicolás met several difficulties in building the structure and in the shortage of subsidies and students enrolled. In 1879, Fagnano became ill of typhus and was forced to reconstitute in Buenos Aires. His management of the college, now submerged by debts, did not satisfy his brothers, who while appreciating the dedication to work and the will force of Fagnano, rebuked him with an unhealthy and rash management. Buenos Aires superiors considered it unsuitable for such responsibilities.

However, in Turin Don Bosco continued to bet on the priest and entrusted him with the management of a parish at Carmen de Patagones, in the remote region of Patagonia. On 2 December 1883 Fagnano was appointed apostolic prefect of southern Patagonia, Malvine and all southern territories to the Strait of Magellano.

Meanwhile, between 1880 and 1887, Fagnano became the protagonist of several explorations throughout the Rio Negro valley, to get in touch with the Aboriginal groups scattered throughout the territory. In 1887 he left his residence of Carmen de Patagones to move to the Chilean town of Punta Arenas, in the Land of Fire. He devoted himself to the works of exploration and evangelization of these territories, building colleges, schools, orators and places of worship.

In 1890 he obtained from Chilean President José Manuel Balmaceda the concession of the Dawson Island, where the Salesians began to build a mission called San Rafael, inhabited by natives of various Fuegine tribes. The project failed to take off and the population was victims of diseases such as typhus, scarlet fever and tuberculosis. San Rafael was abandoned in 1911.

Between 1892 and 1893, another mission was launched on a concession located at the source of the Rio Grande, which took the name Our Lady of Candelaria. In the hacienda of Candelaria came to be more than 20,000 cattle, attracting even in a stable way groups of indigenous peoples of the Ona ethnicity.

In 1916 the apostolic prefecture of southern Patagonia became an apostolic vicariate. The Chilean Salesian Abrahán Aguilera was chosen as the first prelate.

Fagnano in his last years of life did not stop traveling through Argentina and Chile. He died in Santiago de Chile on 18 September 1916. The community of Punta Arenas wanted his psalm to be transferred to the town where the Piedmontese priest had spent many years, seppelled it in the church he had built.

The lake Fagnano was dedicated to him, located in the Land of Fire, on the border between Chile and Argentina.

On the 100th anniversary of his death, a celebration was held in Rocchetta Tanaro, during which a commemorative plaque was also placed.^[1]