Alfredo Cremonesi

Arriving in Taungû on November 10, 1925, Father Cremonesi spent his first year studying the local language and customs. He was first sent to Yedashé, in the western Yoma region, where he visited numerous villages and obtained many conversions. He was then transferred to Donoku, a mountain village inhabited by the Karen ethnic group (the Red Karens). It is there that he would spend the greater part of his missionary life.

Father Cremonesi led a life of great poverty and intense mortification, traveling long distances on foot through the jungle and mountains to evangelize the local populations, treating the sick with remedies of his own making, and founding small schools.

During the Second World War, Burma, then a British colony, was occupied by Japanese troops. As an Italian national, Father Cremonesi endured harsh privations and internment, but he refused to abandon his mission. After Burma's independence in 1948, a civil war broke out between the central government and the Karen rebels. Despite the extreme danger and pressure for him to take refuge in a safe place, he chose to remain with his faithful in Donoku.

On February 7, 1953, following an armed clash with rebels, Burmese government troops burst into the village of Donoku, suspecting the inhabitants of supporting the rebellion. Father Cremonesi courageously intervened to defend the village chief and his population, asserting that they were innocent. The soldiers opened fire, wounding him gravely. The troop commander finished him off with a bullet directly to the face.

Immediately considered a martyr by the local population, his reputation for holiness spread. The transfer of jurisdiction for his cause of beatification from the Diocese of Taungngu to the Diocese of Crema was granted on March 4, 2004. The diocesan inquiry took place from June 18, 2004, to June 9, 2005. The validity of the inquiry was confirmed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on February 9, 2007.

On March 19, 2019, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the martyrdom of Father Alfredo Cremonesi, killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith). The beatification ceremony was celebrated on October 19, 2019, in the Cathedral of Crema (Italy), presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, representing Pope Francis. His liturgical memorial is set for February 7 (the day of his martyrdom) and is also celebrated on October 12 (the anniversary of his priestly ordination) within the PIME.

The spirituality of Father Alfredo Cremonesi rests on an intimate union with God nourished by incessant prayer. He spent long hours in nocturnal adoration and summarized his spiritual life by the constant search for God in all things. He considered himself a simple instrument, writing that the work of the missionary is the most mysterious and the most wonderful, and that seeing souls convert is a miracle greater than all miracles. His legacy remains alive both in his home diocese of Crema and among the Catholics of Myanmar, for whom he remains the model of the good shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, refusing to abandon them in the hour of danger.